Climate Change and Happiness

image credit | Jasmin Sessler

Thomas and Panu were honored to host Rosemary Randall, pioneering British psychotherapist whose 2005 paper “A New Climate for Psychotherapy” and Carbon Conversations group anticipated the current Climate Conscious Therapy movement. Thomas and Ro reflected on the significance of Ro’s adaptation of psychological grief models to help support and empower members of the public who were experiencing distress as they confronted their own carbon footprints. Panu focused on Ro’s current sense of the emotional impacts of the climate crisis on young people and her new program on Living with the Climate Crisis with the UK Climate Psychology Alliance. As Ro has noted, “It’s a cliché that the antidote to climate despair is action. Far less attention is paid to the process of moving from a state of acute distress, anxiety and grief into a form of action that feels commensurate, practically possible and sustainable over time. This is the process which Living with the Climate Crisis groups aim to address.” Join us for a consoling and thought provoking conversation. 

• Climate Psychology Alliance-UK

• Carbon Conversations

• Cambridge Climate Therapists

• Rosemary Randall, 2005 A new climate for psychotherapy

• Rosemary Randall, 2009 Loss and Climate Change: The Cost of Parallel Narratives

• Ecological Footprint

• Sally Weintrobe (Ed.) 2012  Engaging with Climate Change

• Ncazelo Ncube The Tree of Life Project

• What is Public Narrative and How Can we Use it?

• Panu’s essay on climate grief (BBC Climate Emotions series, 2020)

• Thomas on Climate Change and Grief: A Dual Process Approach

• Ezra Klein (2022, Sept 20). The Single Best Guide to Decarbonization I've Heard

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity. 

Thomas Doherty: Please support the Climate Change and Happiness Podcast. See the donate page at climatechangeandhappiness.com.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now, your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: Well hello. I am Thomas Doherty. 

Panu Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala. 

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. Our podcast. The show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about what we call climate change. The climate crisis. Global warming. Our carbon footprints. Our collective and personal carbon footprints. But in this show we focus on the emotional aspects of climate. And today we’re really honored to have a guest that I’ve known of and followed for many years. 

Rosemary Randall: I’m Rosemary Randall, but most people call me Ro. Which is a name I’ve had since childhood. 

Doherty: And Ro, welcome. Ro is coming in from Cambridge in the UK. And, again, as you know with our podcast this is Thomas and I’m in Portland, Oregon, USA. So I’m just starting my day. Getting my daughter off to school and sitting down to chat. And Panu is toward the end of his evening in Finland. And Ro is toward the end of her day. Late afternoon in the UK. 

I became familiar with Ro around 2008 when I was working on the Ecopsychology journal. We were helping to get this academic journal off the ground and she was one of the people that we approached to publish a paper. And she wrote a very influential paper on climate change and grief. One of the first papers to really address people’s grief about their carbon footprint. And their grief about their own involvement in climate change. And that kind of set a tone for a lot of what we know as “climate psychology” and climate therapy now. 

So I’m really honored to have Ro here. And to just kind of chat about what she’s doing now. And some of her insights. And I know Panu has also followed Ro’s work. Panu do you want to get us started with a discussion today?

Pihkala: Warmly welcome Ro. Very good to see you. And we’ve been talking over the years. And your work has been an inspiration for me since 2013. So not as long as for Thomas, but still for many years. But, would you like to start Ro by going back a bit? We’ve talked in detail about how you got involved with climate psychology and climate emotions in the first place. Would you like to share something about that background?

Randall: Well, I’m a psychotherapist. And so that’s where the interest in psychology and emotion comes from. Along with all the things that took me into that career in the first place. But when I think about what first made me concerned about the environment, I think back to a conversation with a cousin of mine from when I was about 19 or 20. And he was visiting from the states. His family had emigrated. My father’s brother had emigrated to the states just after the second world war. And he said to me “do you know what ecology is?” And I said, “well kind of.” But I didn’t know what he knew. And I hadn't read Rachel Carson. And he had. And he was part of the burgeoning environmental movement in the United States. And that was when I began to think and I began to connect. And I began to value in a different way a lot of the childhood experiences that I had with my parents growing up. Being in wild places. Camping. Being outside. Being connected to the natural world that supports us. 

And for me that was the beginning of joining to other concerns I had which also have strong roots in my family background. But values to do with socialism. Values to do with feminism. And I think that it was that conversation with Michael, my cousin, which brought into my life something which hadn't been there before. The idea that our relationship to the natural world was also political. And culture. And a source for great concern. Back then. So it’s something that has run through my adult life. Sometimes more strongly. Sometimes more weakly. 

Pihkala: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And often in this podcast we talk about environmental identity. And people’s life paths and trajectories. And that’s, of course, something which is studied in environmental education research. And the connections between psychology and education are very close. And awakenings. And epiphanies. Something which may happen for many people. And I hear you sharing a story of one kind of those. 

Later on know that you also did some research on climate activists yourself. And thought about various phases that people may go through in this journey. But, how did it then go with combining the official work that you are doing with psychology and therapy and with environmental and climate concerns? When do you consider that that kind of work started for you?

Randall: I think for a long time they were quite separate. I practiced in private practice as a psychotherapist. I worked as a counselor in the university. And I lived a—I suppose—low impact kind of life. And for many years I think that was about it. I had lots of friends from the early days of the environmental movement. From a time when I was on the editorial collective of a magazine called undercurrents in the 1970s. And I retained some of those connections. But I think those two strands of my life were actually quite separate until the 2000s when the news about climate began to hit me much more. And I began to think about it. And I began to write about it. And I began to wonder why when other professions seemed to be waking up to the climate crisis, psychotherapy wasn't. And I wrote a paper which was published in 2005 which I called “A New Climate for Psychotherapy” because I wanted psychotherapists to wake up. I wanted to say come on guys we should be concerned too. There are groups with names like Historians for Climate, where are the therapists?!

But the curious thing was that my colleagues didn't really respond very well in my immediate environment. Or even particularly more widely. But I went to a conference at the Center for  Alternative Technology that year in 2005. I’ve got back in touch with some of my old friends from the environmental movement. And I presented a version of this paper which was very brief but in which I described the process of disavowal. Where people know with one part of themselves exactly what’s going on and with another part of themselves they just carry on as usual. That splitting of the mind that allows that was a revelation to many of the people I was speaking to. 

And so I discovered that the people who were really interested weren't my therapeutic colleagues, but they were the people in the burgeoning climate movement in the UK that I was now meeting. And that set me on a different path. Along with another of those epiphany moments that Panu was talking about. Because my son who at that point was [age] 20, 21 had fetched up working at the Center for Alternative Technology. And we went out on a walk. And I’ve told this story many times. But we went out on a walk and he was lecturing me about carbon emissions and carbon footprints. And I was like what? Who are you talking to? I know all this. But of course I didn't. And he knew much more than I did. 

And that was the point at which I realized the enormous difference between an average UK footprint. Which was then thought to be a 10 ton footprint. And the sustainable footprint which was 1, 2 tons. And I didn’t want to believe it. I found myself in the process of disavowal. Temporarily.  But there I was. And it was another of those epiphanies where you think what I’m doing is not enough. I have to take this more seriously. I have to change direction. And that was when I brought climate and psychotherapy together both in my own mind and in my own life.

Doherty: That’s really great, Ro. And just tracking along with this. And I think for the listeners, as we’ve talked about before, there’s sort of a timeline of climate change. If we lined up all the listeners in a row from the elders to the young people. The elders can find these moments where climate entered into their life. Or their awareness of climate change changed. Ro is giving some great examples of that. For young people, they’ve always known about climate change. It’s always been a spector in the back of their minds from birth. But there’s a lot of people—some of the listeners—who have been doing this work for a while. And their environmental journey is long. And it does go back to sort of “pre-Inconvenient Truth” times. “Pre” when climate change was a pressing issue. When it was more of a general ecological awakening that Ro talked about. So it’s just really helpful.

And then of course the other piece that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is this idea of a carbon footprint calculator. Which is a thing that was created inadvertently by… Well it was sort of a construct in research in sustainability, but it was popularized as most people now know from British Petroleum and their “Beyond Petroleum” advertising campaign. So they kind of inadvertently brought this into the public. I think partly, as we know, to distract from their own role in the climate crisis. And to put it on people. So there’s this whole dilemma of us taking responsibility, but also being blamed personally for things that are well beyond our control. 

And then that, of course, I think is where the grief comes in. I mean I’ve been thinking, you know, which came first, the calculator or the grief. Right? But it seems to me, Ro, when you started. And I can really see you going around. You know, who are these far out people going around to these meetings with carbon calculators and having people talk about them. But as soon as people did, it seemed to me that they opened up to the feelings. And to the grief. And to the powerlessness. And the climate hostage situation that people are in. And is that how you got into the grief work then? Because the calculators brought people’s grief out? 

Randall: Yes. It was. What my son was working on at that time with his colleagues was a carbon calculator. And I think the recent publicity about BP’s role in this I think has sometimes been slightly confusing because I think for me the carbon footprinting really goes back into the work of Mathis Wackernagel. The ecological footprint. I think that this whole debate takes you into the question of how we look at this. On the need to adopt a systems understanding. We need to look at this from a psychosocial perspective. Where we don’t give up personal responsibility, but we do also take account of the complex systems that make us complicit in it. 

And where I began was with the carbon footprint calculator. We used to go around in Cambridge where I live to all kinds of public events with a calculator. We would often calculate people’s carbon footprints. And what I did was I tried to train people in the use of this so that we weren’t just asking people about the numbers. We were asking people how they felt. Because when you ask people about the areas of carbon footprint. Your home energy. Your travel. The food that you eat. And the money that you spend. You’re delving intimately into people’s experience. And when people look at the impact of what feels like an ordinary life, it’s a very upsetting experience. And that took me very rapidly into the need to support people in talking about how serious climate change was. And how much it meant that life had to change because however you chop it up if you want to live in a world that has any form of equity and justice and how the lives of those in what I call the overdeveloped countries have to change. And I think that’s a very hard thing to take on. And there’s been quite a lot of pushback against that in some courses. And that technology will always save us. That life doesn't have to change because the planes are magically going to fly on vegetable oil regardless of how many hectares of land that might take. So I think it’s a difficult and complex problem. Because of course the moment you ask someone to think about reducing their emissions, you’re into systemic issues. Which means that that’s difficult. 

Doherty: Yeah into the ecological issues, you know, “when you pull on one thing in the universe it is hitched to everything else” as John Muir said. Let me add one more point and then turn it over to Panu. We don’t have time to get deeply into grief and loss work, but I think for the listeners it seems to me that what was really helpful Ro that you did was bring in the work of William Worden who was one of the researchers who studied grief. Grief that happens when something we value is lost. Not necessarily grief about our own death, but grief if a parent loses a child. And the stages of grief that happen for people regarding that. And this whole journey of grief where we kind of are broken from life and have to eventually kind of reinvest our energy back into life after we process and work through the loss. And then all the detours that people can get into as that happens. We idealize what was lost. We get stuck and don’t want to move forward. Or we have severe emotional blocks. Or etcetera etcetera. 

But it seems to me that bringing in that particular therapeutic inside to the carbon area was really helpful because previously people were thinking about their own death. And kind of Kubler Ross kind of—denial, anger, bargaining. But the Warden stuff I thought was more accurate. That’s a summary but that’s a fair statement I think about the grief process. 

Randall: I think that’s right. And I think that the kinds of climate grief that I’ve encountered since I wrote that paper have changed. Because at that time I was thinking a lot about people’s grief in letting go of the kind of life they’d become used to. Because when you look at any plans for how life might be. Whether it’s the UK Government’s one. They all involve changes in the way that we live. But what I encounter amongst young people particularly now is a very, very acute sense of disorientation. A very acute sense of the world coming apart. [It] feels to me much more like the experience of a child losing a parent. It’s that same sense of being completely unmoored from life. Of feeling that this can’t have happened. This is impossible. This can’t be true. At the same time at which you know that this is true. You know that mum or dad is not coming back. But what you feel is the loss of everything around you that makes life safe. That makes it feel as if life has got some chance of going on being. That you have some chance of going on being. 

And I think that kind of sense of being completely poleaxed is something that has arrived in my experience in the last five years or so. I think earlier people were certainly overthrown by what was happening. But it was a much more rapid return to that sense of well I need to reorient. I need to do something. I need to think about it. I need to find a way through this. I do think that it’s harder now for people.

Pihkala: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. And I’ve noticed similar things. Especially in my work in Finland. And it’s a kind of existential crisis. It goes to the level of people’s systems of meaning. You know, the sort of foundations of who they feel and think that they are. And how they related with the world. And some of the very fundamental basic assumptions and beliefs become challenged. And that’s, of course, a great chance for traumatic grief. And a complex combination of existential issues. Grappling with various meanings in life. And then experiencing various kinds of changes and losses and having to function in your everyday life at the same time. 

This is very closely related to some of the recent work I’ve been doing in relation to various theories of grief and bereavement. But I’m not going into details now. But that’s something that I very much valued in your work, Ro. That you have always kept both this knowledge of where people are and then awareness of the great complexity of what is happening. And I think that’s one part of the appeal of the work of you and colleagues to also the environmental activist people. Because then they start to think that hmm this might offer solutions to those dilemmas [such as] why are people not giving up driving with their own vehicles, for example. To use an example from our 2009 article. 

And also that granularity about emotions which is something we have often talked about at this podcast. And which is very close to using both. Or us three I would dare to say. And I remember reading your 2013 article from this great book Engaging with Climate Change. And that led me forward in thinking about shame and guilt also in relation to ecological issues. So I just wanted to bring those links to one of our previous episodes where we discuss guilt. Not so much shame. How do you feel about the reception of your work now in the 2010’s and early 2020’s? Have you seen more advances or new, you know, obstacles arising? I know that life is a complex mix of different kinds of developments but just wanting to ask about it? How’s it been lately about the reception? 

Randall: I think the whole field of climate psychology has developed hugely in the period since I was first so disappointed in my colleagues. I mean I have since acquired many, many wonderful colleagues and coworkers. Like yourselves who are thinking and working on these issues. Who are making all kinds of wonderful advances in understanding in complex ways these interrelationships between these wicked systems and our personal experiences of them. That’s been a huge change. There’s so many more people writing, working and talking about these things now. 

Doherty: Yeah so you’re less alone, I guess we could say. More like minded people. And I think that’s one of the consolations of this time. Ro you said five years ago or so, you know, I think there was—we’ll probably have to invent a name for it—a societal tipping point here a few years ago. I think most places around the world where climate went from a special interest kind of environmental issue to a public issue. I know in the Pacific Northwest in the US where I live it was with the fires and the smoke and the droughts. So generally the natural disasters have brought that into people. So there is a whole new audience clamoring for this kind of help.

One of the terms you used Ro that I liked in the article—which we’ll link in our show notes. When I’m training therapists I’m actively training therapists who are, you know, trying to get schooled up into all this work. And, you know, talking about the special place that therapy holds for people. It’s a place, to use a military metaphor, where we can kind of, or a sports metaphor, get off the playing field. Or get off the battlefield and take our armor off for a little bit. And sort of see what we’re doing and collect ourselves. And you call that “the hinterland.” So it sounds like that’s a concept that you’re all aware of in your group as well. And I think that’s helpful for people to find their place to take off the armor and sort of be with this. Do you want to say anything more about what you think about what that space is? Or what makes a good space like that?

Randall: For me, personally that space has come with the group I’m part of here in Cambridge. We call ourselves Cambridge Climate Therapists. And in our early conversations one of the things we talked about was this idea of the hinterland. Which was the place back from the action where it was possible to sink. And to reflect. And so it’s a place where you could feel it slowly. And you can feel it with the assistance of sort. Rather than being in action where your actions are instant. You do what seems intuitively for the moment. But being able to be in that space. When we’re in the hinterland I feel that as people with psychological skills we’re better placed to be useful to those who are taking off in very difficult actions. Getting burnt out. Suffering traumas ... And maybe generally not being able to stop enough. To examine what’s going on. And often finding that within the organizations they’re part of that the distress is being projected in very difficult and painful ways. But I think in order to be able to help people with that you do have to take this step back. You have to be in the hinterland. Where you are acting much more slowly. Reflectively. Carefully. 

Pihkala: Yes. Thanks for sharing all that. And raising up this importance is also a kind of rhythm, you know. Rhythm of engagement and withdrawal. I’ve been working with some people who organize periods of silence as a way of withdrawal. So that’s one way related to that. 

But I know that you’ve been developing this new method based on the influential old work around so-called carbon conversations. We’ll again put links on the podcast website. And there were some very good facilitators guides also for those conversations. But would you like to say something about this new development? It seems to connect with many of the themes you were describing. 

Randall: Well just a sentence about the old carbon conversations project. This was something which I started back in 2006, 2007. And we ran small groups for people who were concerned about climate issues. And who wanted to look at how to reduce their impact. And this to our surprise took off and became very popular in all kinds of places. There were some volunteers who we gave some very rudimentary training to. And this project ran for quite a long time. It was a psychologically-based project. And to me to the point where I thought it had run its course. And I wanted to move on from it. And then about three years ago. No. A year ago. Rebecca Nester who was part of the Climate Psychology Alliance here in the UK and an old facilitator of carbon conversations got in touch with me. And we had this conversation about what a group-based activity for the 2020's would look like. What would it be? 

And that was the beginning of a new project where both of us felt strongly that people need to be located collectively when they respond to the climate crisis. They need to be working with others. This could be in their own community. This could be politically. This could be at work. We need connection. And what we were seeing was that some of the people who were getting involved in climate work were moving very rapidly into action. And were not really being able to process what was happening to them. We were also seeing people of my own generation and people of the generations in between suffering from burn out. Suffering from feelings of despair and disappointment. Feelings of exhaustion. That they had been involved in these issues for so long. And so much of it seemed like you were trying to hold back a tide that you couldn't stop. So we felt that there were these huge emotional issues which were impeding and affecting people’s ability to engage in fruitful action. 

And so we began to plan for a kind of new carbon conversation. And these groups are now coming to fruition. We’ve run a pilot group and we’re going to publish the materials we hope within the next two or three months. So that other people who are skilled in facilitation can use them and adapt them to their own purposes. But in the actual framework for this work, it’s very much psychosocial. It’s very much systemic in the way that we look at things. But there are basically three chunks of material in the ten meetings. Or the ten sessions that make up living with the climate crisis. 

The first part is given over to talking about the experience of living with the climate crisis. Waking up to it. Having lived with it for decades. Being consumed by it. Whatever that happens to be. And it that we’ve looked at and will be using a method which you may be familiar with which is David Denborough and Ncazelo Ncube’s Tree of Life. Which they developed for working with trauma. But which we are using in a much more general sense. It’s a storytelling method. And it’s a method which builds strength. It doesn't focus on the trauma, it focuses on what you have within you that you can bring into a collective situation. And it has very much binded the idea of the need to look at the collective origins of distress. In the political and social systems. And to become able to speak richly and deeply with a thick narrative about them. So we’ve drawn on that in our approach to helping people understand what’s happening to them. And that makes up about a third of what we do. 

We then look at communication. Which is often something which campaigns struggle with. And we use partly therapeutic understandings of what happens when you get into really difficult conversations with your family and your friends and your colleagues. And partly we draw on Marshall Ganz’s public narrative work in that. And finally we look at the systems that people are part of and where they want to take action. How to move towards action. We look at the skills that people have. We look at how to reflect on what you’re doing. So again we’re drawing from a lot of different areas of psychological understanding in creating this. But overarching is this kind of metaphor that we have. We use the climate movement as an ecosystem. And an ecosystem where you need to find your place. The idea that there’s a place for everybody in that. But you have to find it. And at the moment you may be living in a desert. You know, there may be nothing which surrounds you. Or you may find yourself in a monoculture. Or you may be one of the old trees that just needs to kind of keel over and nourish the new growth. That’s how I feel at the moment. 

Doherty: Yes. You know, well this is beautiful, Ro. We’ll take about five more minutes and wrap up our talk today. There’s so many things. I mean again bringing in the listeners. You know, I’ve been involved in this for a long time. Panu has. But I learn new things everyday with this. That’s another important thing to keep in mind is that we’re always learning. Some of the things that Ro said today touch me deeply. I mean this idea of just a place to “feel slowly” is such a great term. Now I know Panu would get that because that kind of comes really out of I think Panu’s style. But for me that’s something. I’m pretty concrete so I get these things in my head. Oh, feel slowly. That’s helpful for me. Because most of us are feeling fast.

And then I think obviously one of the changes from the carbon conversations. I almost said “carbon confrontations” right? A little freudian slip. So, you know, it was like we were being confronted, but now, you know, we really need to bolster people more. Ro when you said like a child losing a parent. That gave me chills. Really hit me emotionally. Because that really is how people are feeling. And a situation like that is just a different emotional game. So I really do appreciate this. So anyways I’m learning and I think listeners, you know, we’re always learning through this. But Panu what are you thinking of here as we wrap up such a great conversation? 

Pihkala: Yeah I’m very grateful that we’ve had a chance to engage in this. And this new revised method of living with the climate crisis sounds very good to me. And, of course, we’ve talked about this with Ro over zoom some time. And there’s many shared interests, but I haven't heard about it at this length so I’m very glad to hear this. And I think that for the listeners this metaphor of the ecosystem also in relation to climate and environmental matters is very important. And I think that’s a message that we’ve been trying to deliver also with Thomas. That there is a place for everyone here. And it may feel sometimes that what’s the use of anything that I do. And people’s circumstances can be very different. We have various amounts of resources and possibilities and so on. But there’s something for everyone even if it’s close circles and advancing caring in this increasingly chaotic world. That’s a very fundamental and important task. So I’ve been very grateful for this conversation. 

And, as Thomas said, we regretfully have to wrap up quite soon. It would be interesting to continue this for a long time. But could I ask you? Ro still you’ve already mentioned some of these, but what are some things that give you resources and strength in these times? You mentioned the companionship of Cambridge Therapists and some. Do you want to dwell a bit on that?

Randall: As far as thinking I do with my colleagues in Cambridge Climate Therapists. I have a tendency to rush. To burn out. To respond instantly. So that group slows me down. And that’s very important to me. I also rely on my husband. Who’s also been my partner on a lot of this journey for over 40 years now. And the rest of my family. Some of whom are in Wales where we go quite often. To the little town where they live. The rural town where they live. Where climate change feels a little bit further away sometimes. Particularly this summer when in East England it was drought. Constant drought. And it's the connection to people that really sustains me. Love. Perhaps at the end of it it’s love. 

Doherty: Yeah. It is true. So much of this work. So much of what I’ve found in my therapeutic work is isolation is really the toxic piece in this. We can bear things when we’re bearing it together. So the isolation piece for all of us to keep in mind. Yeah so we’re going to wrap up today. We, again, got into the emotional side and the deep slow feeling and slow thinking. So this is good for our listeners to hear. 

And then to bring back to reality at the very end. Even though it feels like the parent is being lost, we have to remember that there are a lot of parents out there doing good work. We’ll put a link into A Guide to Decarbonization that American journalist Ezra Klein put out recently. There’s so many people doing so many interesting, positive, very smart things regarding decarbonization in the real sense, not the personal carbon footprint. But in societal change. A whole structural societal change. So we don’t want to lose those people. It does them a disservice. Our imagination makes us think that there are no adults and parents out there. But that’s not true. We know that we are adults ourselves and also there are very gifted people working in the UK and the US so we want to just shout out to them as well. 

Thank you so much Ro. It’s been really a pleasure to chat with you. 

Randall: May I say one last word which is just that I think when we think about grief, we have to remember that there is a place, the other side of it. And I think that’s what you were talking about here. Is the place. The other side of grief. You never forget the person you lost. Your life is forever changed, but there’s a place on the other side where life has meaning. And where life is worth living. And that’s where we want people to get to. Through connection and love. 

Pihkala: Exactly. Relearning the world. 

Doherty: Yeah. Relearning the world. The other side of grief. Our loss and our reconnecting with life and so we’re playing on that knife edge today here with this episode. But thanks again. Ro, what are you going to do with the rest of your evening?

Randall: I’m going to make food. And I’m going to chat with my husband. And I’m going to chill.

Doherty: Very good. 

Pihkala: Sounds excellent. My sons will finish their choir rehearsal quite soon. Luckily they still like to do that. They sometimes are tired of going to practice, but they still like the thing. So I’m going to take them home from the center of the town amidst the darkening evening in Helsinki. But warm thanks especially to you, Ro. And to Thomas and all the listeners. Do take care. 

Doherty: Yes. And I need to get my day started here. After this great start and do work on all the things we’ve talked about today. I’m going to be focusing on including checking in with my therapy group. My therapists out there in the world so we’ll definitely talk about my insights today with the therapists and spread this love around. Alright you all take care. 

Randall: Thank you very much for having me on your show. It’s been a pleasure. 

Doherty: The Climate Change and Happiness Podcast is a self-funded, volunteer effort. Please support us so we can keep bringing you messages of coping and thriving. See the donate page at climatechangeandhappiness.com.

image credit | Jacqueline Day

Thomas and Panu discussed ecological guilt, a ubiquitous feeling many of us experience, but rarely explore deeply. Panu explained various levels of ecological guilt from small daily uneasiness about our activities and their ecological impacts to more troubling experiences of public shame and even species guilt. Thomas had insights about the levels or “volume knob” of this and other eco- and climate feelings and the societal forces at play in heightening our guilt feelings or minimizing them, and possible benefits of “ditching guilt” when it stifles our happiness and ability to take action to solve environmental problems. Panu and Thomas also recognized the paradox of having the privilege to feel guilty about issues like one’s carbon footprint and how an assumption of ecological guilt obscures other common emotional experiences about climate and environmental problems that people have around the world. What should we do about eco-guilt? Are we all climate hypocrites? Is taking action really an “antidote to despair”? Listen in on this surprisingly intriguing talk and then draw your own conclusions. 

• Panu and Charlie Kurth (2022). Eco-anxiety: What it is and why it matters. 

• Lorriane Whitmarsch and colleagues (2022) Climate anxiety: What predicts it and how is it related to climate action?

• Tim Jensen (2019) Ecologies of Guilt in Environmental Rhetorics 

• Alexis Shotwell (2016). Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times

• Sami Grover (2021) We’re All Climate Hypocrites Now 

• Jennifer Uchendu on founding The Eco-Anxiety in Africa Project

• Training Event, Portland Oregon: Mastering Eco and Climate Conscious Therapy: Skills, Ethics, and Community

• Ruska: A Finnish word for bright autumn colors 

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity. 

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now, your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.

Thomas Doherty: Hello, I’m Thomas Doherty.

Panu Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. Our podcast. This is an international podcast, I am in the US and Panu is in Finland. My morning and Panu’s evening. And this is the show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about the personal side of climate change and the climate emergency. And in particular their emotional responses and their feelings. Much of the discourse we see is often about the facts and the information and the data and the policies. Which are highly, highly important. But we are making time here to talk about the emotion, the emotional piece, how we feel. 

And today, dear listeners, we are going to talk about ecological guilt. Everything you wanted to know about ecological guilt. What is this? And how does it work? And how do we understand it? I totally understand if someone wants to turn the podcast off and, you know, maybe listen to something else. But I would ask you to stick with us and talk about this because we have wrestled with this in various directions. And it’s a very interesting topic. And we’re going to talk about it from different angles. From our various expertise. And what we’re seeing in the world and our colleagues and what’s happening in the world for others and for ourselves. Panu, do you want to talk about a range of things and then dive into one? And maybe talk about some of the recent research you’ve been doing? Where do you want to start?

Pihkala: Perhaps starting with the simple question: what is guilt? And I might ask you all — listeners also — to just take a moment and think about that. How do I understand the word guilt? And of course in various languages the connotations might be different. In my work with environmental matters, I’ve noticed varieties of guilt for a very long time. And then at some point I realized just how different people’s images about guilt are. I realized that when talking about ecological guilt, some people instantly think of very strong guilt. You know, that kind of thing when you are a kid and you notice that you’ve done something wrong and you fear that your parents will find out. And this might also very closely link to shame. 

But that’s not what the scholars of ecological guilt are only about. So there may be very strong feelings, but there may also be these quiet everyday glimpses of disturbance. When we are making things and making choices which we know are not perfect for ecological matters, but then again our lives are so complex in contemporary societies that it is often very difficult to strive for any purity in matters. So that’s what I want to start with. This broad range of what we are talking about here. So not just the most intense feelings of guilt but also these fleeting disturbances we feel. And also crediting Tim Jensen who is an author who has done great work around ecological guilt. But how about you, Thomas? When did you start thinking about ecological guilt more? And what sort of variations do you have in mind when you hear the word ecological guilt? 

Doherty: Yeah. Panu thanks. I mean this is really interesting. Even though, I mean, listeners should know that Panu and I do talk about this stuff. And we’ve already sort of had a pre conversation about this. But even as Panu speaks I’m understanding more about where he’s coming from. Because when I heard you talk about variations of guilt, I thought you meant guilt about different things or different kinds of feelings. But I see that you mean variations in just the intensity and awareness of guilt. So I can have really lightweight guilt or really mundane guilt. Or like serious, shameful, in front of the whole community feeling terrible kind of guilt. 

You know, okay so yes as with all emotions. We’re emotional beings. We cannot be alive and not have emotions and our unique feelings. So you’re suggesting that, you know, this environmental stuff is really challenging us to just know a little bit. Make friends with guilt as a thing and how it manifests in different ways.  It could be really mundane. And I think that’s helpful. I don’t often think about it that way. And maybe listeners don’t either. Just these differences — it’s like turning up the volume. A lot of times the volume is really low. Like one. And then once in a while if we see a bad news story or we really are in touch with our carbon impacts that we’re doing, then the guilt meter turns on louder.

Where I live in the US, we use electricity for power. And I’m trying to use more of that and get off fossil fuels. And making strides in my lifestyle. But, you know, my electric company sends me a notice every month with my bill and it tells me what I’m using for electricity. You know, where my electricity is going. And it’s helpful to know that I am increasing the electric use, you know, in some areas that I want to like having more of my cooking through electric versus gas. But I see that a big part of my electric use is always on appliances. It’s just these appliances that are always on. And it makes me feel guilty that I’m just, you know, having these power sources just sitting around my home that are just sucking energy all the time, not really doing anything. So to me that’s a mundane day-to-day place where I might have some eco guilt. And I’m not entirely sure what to do about that because I don’t even know what all of these appliances are. You know, if you leave your computer plugged in of course it’s sucking power. Or, you know, any number of appliances have little indicator lights that are always blinking. So, yeah. So there’s a volume level of guilt. 

And then I know you’ve talked about some of these traps. These double binds. Flip side kind of things. What do you mean by that?

Pihkala: Yeah. It’s related to the sort of plasticity of guilt. You know, you can feel guilt for something that you have done. But you can also feel guilt for something you haven’t done. So for example, you get the feeling that you should have done something based on some values. And then you get some kind of guilt for not doing so. And of course our feelings of guilt when evaluated from an ethical perspective or from a psychological well-being perspective. There’s, you know, more constructive forms of guilt and less constructive forms of guilt. And I think this is very important in relation to environmental matters because there are quite complicated questions such as who should be feeling what kind of guilt and in what levels in what situations. And it’s quite easy for people to feel either too much or too little. That’s my observation. A very broad one. 

I meet a lot of people with strong environmental identities. That’s a concept we have often talked about in this podcast and especially you Thomas. And for those people a pressing psychological issue is that they tend to feel quite often and quite heavily ecological guilt. But then for some other people, especially if they don’t see good ways forward from ecological guilt — if they don't see options where they could act in a more ecological way — people may distance themselves from these feelings and sometimes use numbing and trying not to care about it so much. And that’s another complicated issue that may happen. 

So coming to your question, the power dynamics in our societies around ecological guilt are also highly important because there are forces which are trying either to get us to feel more ecological guilt or less ecological guilt. So that’s something I think is very important.

Doherty: Yeah. Well that’s really helpful too. I mean I was looking up just guilt definitions and, you know, it’s always helpful to remind ourselves what is the definition of a word. And guilt is seen as being responsible for something that happened. I am guilty of it. But guilt can also be a feeling of being responsible for something. Right? I might feel guilty, maybe inappropriately. Like maybe it wasn't really my fault but I still feel guilty because I feel like I contributed to it. So yes. 

And then shame is the public side of that. Like how to be seen. You know, guilt is private. That’s the insidiousness about guilt as well. Like a lot of the troubling eco emotions. They isolate us and we feel it privately. It’s our private suffering. And so listeners I just want to validate that if you have private suffering about these issues, you’re perfectly normal unfortunately. You don’t have an eco disorder, it's just life because so many of us are privately suffering in so many ways through all this stuff. So yes. 

And then Panu, you bring up the power thing. And that’s why I’m always weary of the eco guilt story because I don’t really want to normalize it in the sense of just saying well everybody, you know, you should all feel guilty and feel bad. Like you say, different people feel different levels of it. And I know some listeners who are environmental advocates or activists who are saying okay how do I use this now? How do I make those people that don’t have enough guilt how do I turn up their volume? And, you know, because they need to change. And unfortunately some environmental groups don’t think about the human casualties. So they don’t really care about how to turn down the volume of the people that have it over much. Because again one of the power structures is the environmental movement. Who really sees eco guilt as a lever to make societal change. And it is a kind of lever we just have to be very careful about. 

Yeah, so guilt becomes this kind of lever that people want to be able to get their hands on those knobs. Those volume knobs a little bit. So, yeah. 

Pihkala: Yeah. That’s a very important observation you’re making, Thomas I think. And our previous guest Sarah Jaquette Ray…

Doherty: Yes.

Pihkala: … discusses this also for example in her book Field Guide to Climate Anxiety where she sees the problems around ecological guilt being so heavy that she actually advocates “ditching guilt”. And to a certain point I totally agree. But then, of course, for people who have resources and power including me, for example, even though I’m not rich by any standards in Finnish society, guilt as responsibility, I see, has its role. But that must be combined with the caution around overly strong burdens. Especially because there are some [problematic] power structures. And trying to do so. 

And that’s something that Tim Jensen in his book, Ecologies of Guilt in Environmental Rhetorics, criticizes and shows interesting examples of how some companies have used psychology in efforts to share the responsibility more to individuals and citizens. One of the more insidious ones was British Petroleum after the DeepWater Horizon oil spill: developing a public relations campaign reminding people that you know we all are using oil in some way. For example, we are driving cars. And then there’s the plastic thing. So they were very intentionally trying to distribute responsibility and guilt to citizens and individuals. And trying to divert attention away from the very serious procedural mistakes that they were making which enabled that terrible accident in the Gulf of Mexico. So this is one example of how insidious that dynamics around ecological guilt can sometimes be. 

Doherty: Yeah. Exactly. And so that’s, you know, again in academic or therapy circles we talk about a critical consciousness about something versus being unconscious or uncritical. And the critical consciousness just simply means I understand there’s a whole context here of power and things that are happening. None of this happens by accident. Obviously we have marketers that want to turn down people’s eco angst, eco guilt so they’ll buy more products. And don’t worry about plastics. And don’t worry about fossil fuels. And it’s inevitable. And we need this. 

In the US it’s kind of, you know, a national value to be a consumer and to use these things. And so people use all these sorts of ways of thinking. Yeah, so they do exist. There is unfortunately kind of a culture war going on around these feelings. And individuals are trapped in the middle. And part of the whole kind of ecological awakening that people have is they start to realize this. And they start to take control. So ultimately we want to be in control of our feelings. And really feel the feelings that are genuine for us. And built the capacity and ability to hold those and not just be, you know, manipulated by things. 

And so, yes, carbon footprint is a real thing. Like we can think about our use of energy and we should. That’s ethical. But it has also been used as a kind of diversion. Like blaming the public. And so we have to not accept that piece. You know, this is really about structural change. Because we didn’t choose what’s in our products. We don’t choose all the plastic we get. We don’t have power over the fuel standards or what vehicles are even available for us to purchase. If we can purchase a vehicle. 

Pihkala: Yeah. Indeed. And after all, reasonable guilt is based on caring. You know, if you care about something then if there’s a presumed violation or not filling your responsibility then you feel guilt. And fundamentally it’s based on care. Of course, there’s many examples where people may get feelings of guilt for the wrong reasons. But still the fundamental foundation stands I think. 

And this is linked with the concept of double bind that you, Thomas, mentioned very briefly earlier and which I have been talking about in our pre conversations. That’s also something that Jensen is applying to ecological guilt. This old concept by Gregory Bateson, “double bind.” Which means that people are offered a solution which ends up perpetuating the problem. And so for ecological guilt, the most easily available option is buying environmentally friendly products. And then people get some alleviation from the guilt, but because the problems are structural the individual choices alone can’t change society. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be important, but they can’t do the whole thing. So that’s why Jensen is applying double bind here because it binds people then to experience guilt again because the problems are not going away even though people genuinely wanted to do something to solve the problems by doing these individual choices.

Doherty: Yeah it really stinks, Panu. I mean we’re stuck in these binds all the time. And that one is that marketing binds that there will be a product that will save us. Which is the whole start of a lot of this problem in the first place. So yeah so we want to really honor our feelings of guilt. That they are normal and healthy. And we want to be careful of these shadow sides. 

Another shadow side is of course that we assume that everyone has eco guilt, but that might be an assumption based on our privilege or our placement because we have the, oddly enough, luxury to feel guilty. Whereas others might just be working on their survival. So that’s been a critique of Sarah, our previous guest, who has talked about this in her work. That’s been a critique that eco guilt is a white upper class, upper middle class phenomenon. And it ignores, you know, African Americans. People of Color. You know, social movements around the world. The Global South. People have been working on social change. They don’t have the luxury of feeling guilty. They’re trying to take action. And so it kind of obscures a lot of people’s experience if we just assume everyone has eco guilt. That’s kind of a faulty assumption. So we want to think about that side too. 

Pihkala: Yeah definitely. That’s a hugely important point. And it may be related to complex dynamics in the industrialized world about so-called colonial guilt. You know, these feelings are related to what societies have been doing in history and partly still are doing. And then that may become joined with the ecological issues type of thing. So it can lead to quite a lot of complications and sometimes also then efforts among the privileged people also to distance themselves from guilt. And it also comes back to a very fundamental theme in our podcast which is that people in various contexts should have the right and encouragement to use emotional words which they think are suitable for what they are feeling. So no hegemony here of trying to define a universalizing vocabulary that everybody should use, but instead paying respect to contextual matters. And also different languages. 

It’s also highly interesting that generally in relation to guilt, various languages and cultures have many differences. So it's also fascinating that the basic conceptions in a culture about guilt and shame may be quite different. 

Doherty: Yeah. And so that’s another interesting thing about the idea of emotions. That some of them are relatively universal across different cultures and others are quite unique. And then different cultures. You know, you talked about Jennifer Uchendu. The Nigerian researcher is talking about folks in other countries. And so this isn't just, you know, limited to people in Europe and the US and Canada and the UK. You know, there are people around the world who have some privilege. And have some standing. And are aware of their carbon footprints in all cultures and in all countries. Thinking about how this plays out in each nation based on the nation’s history. Colonialism. Being either a colonizer or a colonized. That’s a whole other piece to this. That, you know, makes it more unique to each listener where they’re placed. 

In addition to the knobs and where we turn up and down these feelings you hinted at. Other kinds of related feelings. So we hurt where we care. If we’re guilty it’s because we have values. Something that we know is being threatened. So that other image for emotions is like a train. It’s like I might pick one car of the train and say I’m feeling this, but there are many other emotions that are part of this train that I’ve probably felt in advance of feeling the guilt. So listeners, you know, you’re not going to feel guilty unless you have other feelings first like care. Like responsibility. Like love. You know, so there are a lot of positive feelings hidden inside guilt. 

Pihkala: Yeah that’s profoundly put Thomas I think. And for eco emotions, sadness is very often intertwined with guilt, also. When we see news about environmental damage, for example, it often evokes both some kind of sadness and some kind of guilt, for example. So, that’s one example of how different emotions need attention. 

We have been hinting at shame a couple of times. And, just to clarify, of course there are various ways to define these concepts, but quite often the differentiation is made so that shame is more related to what we perceive ourselves to be more essentially. And guilt is more related to our actions or inactions. And also there might be ecological shame and climate shame, for example, if it gets to the level that we think that we are deficient in relation to ecological issues and climate issues. And the so-called “species shame” may be quite paralyzing if we think that humanity is just flawed. And so that may be quite damaging for any motivation to do repair. But not in all cases.

Some people have fleshed out also constructive possibilities in shame. It’s more difficult to achieve, but they may happen. For example if we have a group which makes the evaluation that “we have been acting in a way which is at least partly shameful”. And then as a group they decide that hey we want to be honorful again and that’s why we will do this and that. So they engage in changing their behavior in some sort of reparation, also. Doing new things in a new way. And this I see, for example, in the Finnish climate organization called Climate Grandmothers [Aktivistimummot]. So they haven’t succumbed to any climate shame, but they have made the evaluation that hey hmm actually people of all ages should make different value choices. And then they are moving forward.

Doherty: Yeah. So gratitude comes in. I’m guilty but I’m also thankful for what I’ve had and I want to share. There’s a sense of — I’m not sure what the emotion is that’s associated with that urge to want to share what you have. But I know that there must be an emotional word for that in many languages. This sense of sharing abundance. Wanting to have the greater good. Thinking about the greater good. 

So, again, with all these emotions you can think of it either as a train of emotions or, you know, the outward emotion is like the flower, but there’s roots to the emotion. You know, that has all these other feelings. And so, that gets into the idea of working with people who are coping. It’s about emotional regulation, right? And we can kind of move with different feelings and kind of regulate our emotions a little bit so we’re not just suffering and powerless. 

And then I think toward the end here we have to get to the action piece because we’ve hinted at that too and what is the link between eco guilt and taking action, as you’re saying. We have to be careful there because, you know, you shared - I learned about a book today talking to Panu. Sami Grover’s book We Are All Climate Hypocrites Now. Right? Embracing our limitations can unlock a powerful movement, you know. It’s essentially getting past this climate hostage, carbon footprint guilt dilemma and saying yes, we all are embedded and let’s move forward. Let’s get past that. And let’s take action. So, the Zeitgeist is moving forward on this. Like we’re always moving forward on this, but what does it mean when we say, you know. 

A lot of people are saying the antidote to eco anxiety is taking action. So that’s also part of the Zeitgeist now too. And you hear it in all these news stories. Take action, you’ll feel better. But it isn’t that simple. And that’s another way where people are trying to get a hold of our knobs. And like say oh you’re guilty, take action. Either let me sell you this product. Or let me recruit you to my environmental program. To put it simply: this can lead to action and action can be an antidote, if the action has meaning for people. Right? If it makes sense. So, if I’m taking action, it makes my life feel significant. If it gives people purpose. Like the listener, if it gives you a purpose. If you feel like you’re suffering makes sense because you’re channeling your suffering into something useful and it makes sense and for some reason there’s a reason for why you suffered. Because of your privilege, your suffering allowed you to take action and that makes you have a sense of purpose. And it makes you feel significant, then yes, your action will make you feel better. But if someone is just thrust into action without understanding why they’re doing it and what it means. And whether they can do it or not, then you’re just being manipulated yet again.

Pihkala: Yeah. Yeah, it can be a tricky thing if you are trying to achieve acceptance just by doing. This links with many themes in my background. In the work with religion, you know, these dynamics are very often discussed. And sometimes also environmental communicators like George Marshall have taken a look towards religious communities. And the ways in which these communities sometimes manage both to encounter people’s feelings of guilt and shame and provide a sort of communal liberation from that. Often through some kind of promise to do good in the future. So there’s a kind of combination of so-called absolution and commitment to trying to make a change. 

I would also emphasize the structural dimension here.  Sami Grover’s book which I just got is a very interesting one. There’s another called Against Purity. Which is highly important in reminding us that we can’t be completely pure. And if we try to do so we end up in more problems actually. So together with other people recognizing that we are part of this system. We shouldn't let others say that we are hypocrites. Or we shouldn’t let others demand that we would have to move outside societies to be able to criticize the society where we are living. But sort of accepting this implicatedness and this impurity in a way. And still trusting that we can together make a difference. That would be sort of my take on this.

Doherty: Yeah this is great. And, you know, listeners I learn a lot from my conversations with Panu. And I know Panu learns some things too. So, yeah this idea is against purity. You know, this book Living Ethically in Compromised Times by Alexis Shotwell. You know, we’re going to wrap up. Panu brought in at the very end a very important elephant in the room which is religion and spirituality. Which of course as someone who grew up in the Roman Catholic faith, you know, this guilt is entwined with many kinds of religions in various ways. So listeners can think about that’s yet another angle on guilt in general as a feeling. How it plays into your spiritual or religious tradition. 

But we talked about a bunch of things. You know, everything you wanted to know about eco guilt. So  I hope this was helpful for people. It is a feeling. It is a normal feeling. It’s linked to other really healthy and positive feelings like caring and ethics. And, you know, there’s different levels of it. The real mundane, little levels that we have. And then these really, really heavy levels. And there’s all the power structure at play. So we need to kind of stand on our own two feet here. And, yes our guilt can be fuel for action if it gives us meaning and gives us purpose. And helps things to make sense. So a really good discussion yet again, Panu. I really appreciate it. 

Pihkala: Likewise Thomas. Likewise. 

Doherty: And I know you have a busy week. And you’re preparing for a television appearance did you say? Or a media appearance tomorrow?

Pihkala: Yeah. In the Finnish television there's a discussion series about various ecological issues. So that’s on the list tomorrow morning. Now it’s evening in Helsinki and we have some nice autumn colors, the ruska in the Finnish language. The word which means bright autumn colors. So it’s time to go outside for a walk in the evening. And I know you, Thomas, have the day ahead of you and various things to do.

Doherty: Yeah, I’m looking forward to doing a conference event this weekend that’s in person. Where I’ll be able to talk about these things with a large group of people and it’ll be nice to be off of zoom and off of the screen and actually with people. And here in the Pacific Northwest it’s a rainy morning. It’s raining right now. It’s that unique time of the year where we’re used to it being dry here so my backyard is full of outdoor gear that we’ve been using like our wetsuits for going to the ocean that were drying. But now, of course, they’re all wet because it’s raining. And that’s just the way it is in the Pacific Northwest in the fall. So the seasons are turning. So we’ll be in touch with more. Listeners, thank you so much for your time. You can reach us at climatechangeandhappiness.com. You can send us messages and let us know how these episodes are landing for you. And be aware of all of your emotions. And you all take care.

Pihkala: Take care.

image credit |inbal marilli

As a follow up to their conversation with young climate and emotions researcher Isabel Coppola, Thomas and Panu spoke with Environmental Studies Professor Sarah Jaquette Ray, well-known for her writings on climate anxiety and social justice perspectives within the climate and environmental movements. Panu and Sarah collaborated on the Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators Project. Sarah reflected on her own climate emotions journey and what she sees as her sacred role as a teacher and university professor, and the intensity of people reaching out to her about climate change. She noted her experience 7-10 years ago of being enlightened about issues of complicity and despair about climate change among students, and her effort to “go back to the drawing board and reinvent myself as a professor to meet the moment that students were asking for.” This included questioning the impulse among students that “burnout is actually the badge of how much I care” and breaking down traditional barriers in the academy between academic content and emotional support and self care provided by the counseling center. Panu was reminded of a concept he has been using in Finnish, “arkipäivän tilastoimaton hyvyys”, translated as “unaccounted everyday goodness” and referencing California writer Mike Davis, the speakers played with the concepts of “unmobilized love” and “immobilized love.” Sarah looked ahead to the Conference she is helping to organize in April 2023 at University California Riverside Environment, Justice, and the Politics of Emotion: A Virtual and In-Person Symposium along with our previous podcast guest Jade Sasser and other climate and emotions experts. Thomas noted the recent death of scholar Phillip Cushman whose works like the  paper “Why the Self is Empty” and book Constructing the Self, Constructing America are influential in critical psychology and ecopsychology. Join us for an enlightening dialog among leading climate thinkers.

• Sarah Jaquette Ray

• A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety

• Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators Project

• Van Sistine (2022, Sept 12) Campuses are offering therapy for anxiety over climate change – Washington Post.

• April 27-28, 2023: Environment, Justice, and the Politics of Emotion: A Virtual and In-Person Symposium

• Mike Davis, California’s ‘prophet of doom’, on activism in a dying world: ‘Despair is useless’

• Phillip Cushman: Why the Self is Empty and Constructing the Self, Constructing America

• Panu’s article about Eco-anxiety and environmental education, which includes tips for various kinds of educational settings

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity. 

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now, your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.

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

Panu Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala. 

Thomas Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. Our podcast, the the show for people around the globe who are feeling and thinking deeply about climate change, global warming, and all these aspects of this great situation in our world right now. And today, we're lucky to have a special guest.

Sarah Jaquette Ray: Hi, I'm Sarah Jaquette Ray. I'm a professor at Cal Poly Humboldt.

Doherty: And both Panu and I have followed Sarah's work. And Panu has worked with Sarah. And this episode follows nicely along with our conversation recently with Isabel Coppola, a  young researcher who's been studying climate anxiety. So we're going to talk about a number of things today. Both in university. And in our own lives. And in the world. Panu do you want to get us started?

Pihkala: Yes, warmly welcome all and a special welcome to you Sarah. Very good to have you here. We've been collaborating with the existential toolkit for climate justice educators project. We've already had Ellen Kelsey visiting the podcast previously, who is another powerful figure in that network together with Sarah. And of course, in my studies of climate emotions and anxiety, I've often come across Sarah's work. But to get us running, how does it feel right now, Sarah? What's the situation around life and climate change where you are now?

Jaquette Ray: Thanks for asking. And thanks for having me on this podcast. I'm so excited to meet you, Thomas and see you again Panu in this way. And how it feels right now is that there's a lot of intensity. I feel the intensity. I feel the intensity from the people who are reaching out about this. I feel the intensity from the people who are working on it, like you both. And certainly the intensity around evidence of climate disruption and distress all around the world. So I'm thinking about, you know, Mississippi, Pakistan. I'm thinking about the heat waves, even right here closer to home here. And the smoke and the fires in the Northwest. 

I am personally in quite a refuge from all of that here behind “the redwood curtain” in McKinleyville, California, where it's foggy and chilly, and the air is very clear. So I feel very lucky for the moment anyway. But yes. Feeling it in all my networks and feeling it amongst students then. And the news I'm paying attention to as well as I follow these other stories.

Pihkala: Thank you, Sarah, for sharing all that. [I] really appreciate it. For the listeners who haven't followed Sarah's work, she's been one who advocates for different constructive methods for people to be able to stay with these various feelings. And often the contradictions. For example, finding oneself in a relatively safe space and being able to experience joy and happiness, for example. And at the same time, knowing what's happening around the corner, and so on. So I know Sarah that you've been a longtime engaged with this. But what I don't know exactly myself either, is that, how did you get started with your climate emotions journey? Would you like to share something about that?

Jaquette Ray: Yeah, this is a good question because it's interesting enough, I have a background in religious studies. And I studied a lot of Eastern philosophy. And I was super into Zen Buddhism and Taoism and stuff. And something happened to me at the end of college where I somehow thought that if I really wanted to make a difference in the world and be of service to matters of social justice…  I was also very involved in reproductive justice issues during college and even in high school …. And I just thought if I wanted to do that work, it wasn't going to be through religion and spirituality. And so I kind of gave that up and went down this path. And ended up in environmental studies as my lens through which to work on these matters in the world. And I had sort of given up my spiritual interests entirely. 

And I always felt like what I loved about teaching at the college level was the almost-bordering-on-therapeutic relationship with students. And sort of being the midwife of this transition moment. That in most Western cultures, we don't have big rituals and ceremonies to mark for young people. And it felt really bordering on sacred for me to be a college professor. For, you know, watching students undergo this massive transition. And it's always been a big existential moment. But something happened and, you know, about seven or eight years ago, where the existential moment seemed worse than before. You know, when you challenge your cherished beliefs. And you become enlightened about your complicity in various forms of injustice. Or your ideas about what nature is become unraveled. These things are sort of exciting for students even as they're challenging. 

But the despair aspect of realizing that they're living in a world that is uninhabitable for many, many people. And will become uninhabitable for them. And is likely to be uninhabitable for many of their children or future ancestors. This existential reality of the scale and immediacy of this happening was becoming part of our classroom lives. And I realized that in order for this generation to be as empowered and motivated, engaged to take on these challenges of the world, that they were going to need something other than what I had been trained to give them. And it was more like what I was learning in college for my BA in religious studies than what I had learned in my PhD and my masters for environment. 

So I sort of had to kind of go back to the drawing board and reinvent myself as a professor to meet the moment that students were asking for. And this is where I, at the time, wouldn't have said climate was my frame, but I knew there was something existential that I needed to learn all the skills. I had to study all the psychologists. I had to study all the social movement leaders of all the movements. And I had to maybe also learn something about it. Go back to my thinking about spirituality and thinking about other sources of energy for this generation.

Pihkala: Thank you. Thanks for sharing all that. This brings an interesting similarity between our paths, also because I also for a long time worked with religion and spirituality. And then also moved towards interdisciplinary environmental stuff. Much for the very same reasons that you mentioned. And this also touches on our discussions with Thomas a couple of episodes back about Bill Plotkin work. And transitions and rituals. But before I go further onto that, how about you, Thomas? What does this bring into your mind?

Doherty: Yeah, this is a great dialogue. And I'm thinking of my own teaching experiences, teaching graduate school and undergrad. Again, when I was coming out, as someone who had worked in wilderness therapy and wanted to learn how to do eco-therapy, or wilderness, or outdoor counseling. There were no programs at the time. In the 90’s. Official programs, so ended up creating some of those programs. 

So I mean, Sarah, I found your Field Guide book very validating because it really reminded me of a lot of things that I had invented on my own as well. With teaching. You know, kind of just even with undergrads, simple rules, like for every hour you spend dealing with all this heavy existential stuff, you need to spend an hour outside doing something healthy for yourself. You know, these kinds of basic things. And, of course, teaching mostly therapists in the Ecopsychology program that I founded, we were automatically doing all the therapy stuff from the very get go. But very different than … I've met over the years professors. You know, especially 10, 20 years ago, who were trying to teach students about climate change. And then they'd get a nickname like “Dr. Doom.” You know, by their students. Or something like that, because they would just totally… And meeting people that tried to study eco-topics and got so turned off, they just left that major. And so I really appreciate it. I think we've come a long way. I think, just  generally, we've come a long way on how to teach young people how to work in these areas. And we have to relearn it every day. Because it's still so hard.

Jaquette Ray: Yeah, I think we're at a real inflection point with young people. I think when I first started noticing this in young people, they really would not have thought of self care. And that hour in nature you just mentioned. And taking the time to rest. That would have all been just a privilege that we don't have time for. And that the urgency of the problem and combined with the kind of guilt around their privilege. And I'm talking about diversity of students here, not just “white privilege” students. You know, I'm at Cal State. So, relatively speaking, you know, compared to college students, this is not a privileged group. But as Americans period, they're privileged, right? They're American college students. So recognizing their global position. 

You know, this notion of “I should burn out.” The burnout is actually the badge of how much I care. The burnout is actually the sign I'm doing enough work. If I'm not burnt out, then I'm not working hard enough to solve these problems. And so there was a sense at the time that. I had a real uphill battle to climb to get them to come around to realizing that the burnout was not going to save the planet. And now young people are complete - I feel. I've just heard of young people. The majority of the climate movement is completely aware that this is a marathon, not a sprint. And that they're going to have to take care of themselves to keep engaged for their lives. So I think there's a real shift happening.

Pihkala: That's very promising to hear. And I've been noticing similar things. Especially with new climate movements. Integrating this thing. And it's been a bit more tricky for traditional environmental organizations. Where the working culture very often has been such that you sort of keep your sadness hidden. And try to keep a positive and optimistic outlook. And well, I know, Sarah, that you've been doing critical research on the history of American environmentalism also. That's one direction we could go here. But I'd still like us to keep for a moment with the  students. So, what kinds of things have you seen recently, among students? Other than this increasing awareness of the need also for self care and taking breaks? What's your observations about what's happening?

Jaquette Ray: You know, a lot of things, but the one I'd like to pull on the thread of right now is something I've been chewing on for some time, which is whether or not, you know,  they have incredible impatience to be in the college classroom. And we saw this with Greta Thunberg and climate strikes. That there was a sense of “why should I sit in this classroom to learn something for a future that is not even guaranteed?” And they were told, you know, instead of protesting, go back to school. Get the degree, so you have some power, so you can do something. And the youth response to that was, there is not going to be. You know, the systems, [where] you think I'm going to get a job are not going to exist anymore. We have to reinvent those systems now. And I think that suspicion of existing institutions was really amplified in COVID, as well. The sort of crumbling apart and the instability of structures that we took for granted, in my generation, is a real opportunity for young people. And I think that there's enthusiasm and excitement and trepidation around what's possible. Are we midwifing a new future? Are we living at the precipice of the great turning? You know, I have students who are really involved in abolition or other forms of social justice. You know, future envisioning, you know? And they want something new and different. They love the thought that we're living in a womb and not a tomb. And so the doom narrative of, or the Doom moment of environmental studies seems to be on its way out. I'd like to think it is. And we're having this kind of radical imagination. “Let's build the world we want,” kind of a moment with young people. 

However, they're also, therefore, completely suspicious when you do things like career counseling. So there's so much pressure because institutions of higher education are neoliberalized. We are part of capitalism. There's so much pressure to get jobs after college, right? And of course, our students, many of them are first generation college students. They feel a lot of pressure from their families that if they're going to take the sacrifice to go to college, they darn well better get jobs afterwards. So the pressures coming from all directions to channel the knowledge into marketable skill sets. The neoliberal imperative to vocationalize these critiques. There's an internal paradox there. There's a tension there. We're critiquing the systems that are all falling apart. And we're celebrating what we're going to build next. But then you're also telling me I have to build a resume for the old structure, right? And I have to market myself for this capitalist system that's failing everybody. So I think that's a very interesting debate that institutions of higher education are very slow to be thinking about. And I really wish they would be thinking about it much more richly. I wonder what happens in these career planning, you know, conferences where people are going to the them career planning for what? Young people know. They're already on this, you know. They're like, a killer resume for what kind of economy, you know? For the great transition, you know?

Doherty: No, this is great. We were talking earlier, even just this morning, how we’re involved in different networks. And the Climate Psychology Alliance has various listservs and conversation forums here in the US. And there was a very spirited and passionate, you know, exchange about the role of the university. We have links in our show, and, you know, there was a nice article that came out in the Washington Post the other day about University Counseling Centers getting involved in helping support students with anxiety about climate and other issues. Similar to the work Sarah has been doing in her class. But, you know, it's not surprising, of course, that that's going to show up in the counseling center. But then people are also critiquing the whole idea of a university. And maybe we should just have students learn regenerative techniques for living in a new world versus, you know… essentially scrap the university as a vestige of modernity. But, of course, it's not that simple. 

And so again, that's, I think, with this work for me, it's always… You always have to keep stepping back another step and looking at the bigger picture. And the bigger picture. And realizing it's not that simple. And it's not that simple. I think that's one of the hardest things for young people to grok is that it just is not that simple. Part of that whole neoliberal system is offering consumers simple solutions to their life problems, right. And so we do get indoctrinated into this simplicity. I think Bill McKibben talks about that. And other people talk about that. It's just not that simple. You know, these are complicated things that take time. So I don't have anything specific to go from there, but just to name that kind of thing.

Jaquette Ray: Well, just to pull that thread a little bit, too. Because I sometimes think that young people feel like older generations are telling them, you can't have what you want, you know. And I think that part of that is about the kind of developmental stage of where. You know,  there's sort of these five stages of development or whatever. Both of you are experts on this more than I am. But this notion that only at a certain point, do you start to really grasp nuance and paradox and gray areas. And I think “this is not that simple” speaks to this sort of deeper climate wisdom, that, you know, we're going to have a lot of both, and here. We're going to have to participate in the current economy as we work to dismantle it. Right? So there's a lot of both-and. That I think, young people, it's not about their naivety so much as it is about their, you know, desire for what [philosopher] Alexis Shotwell calls “purity politics.” You know, the sort of ideological purity, of just signing up for one thing and having everything be clearly in line with that mission. Whereas they're gonna have a lot of hypocrisy and inconsistency in their lives. And that's just the messiness of climate work. All this work. So I think it's hard for them to accept that.

Pihkala: Yeah. I think that's very well said, both of you. And I recently came across this concept called “messy hope”. And having done lots of analysis on different concepts or assessments of hope that was new and fascinating. And I totally agree with the messiness. And the need for embracing ambivalence and uncertainty. And of course, these are very difficult things. And then we see the counter movement, like you, Sarah, hinted at. People want more binary thinking. And movements, which could support that also. So that's something that I'm actually worried about for the years to come. That is, how are we gonna deal with the rise of authoritarianism and the appeal of just going with the group. I'm often thinking of Erich Fromm, the old 20th century scholar and his work “Escape from Freedom,” [that explored social conditions that facilitated the rise of Nazism] for example. 

Jaquette Ray: Yeah. 

Pihkala: Any thoughts on that, Sarah? I know that you've been discussing relevant topics.

Jaquette Ray: Definitely. Yeah, definitely. I think one of the things in my first book, The Ecological Other, I talked about is the emotion of disgust in the environmental movement. And how disgust activated by people who already have inclinations that are xenophobic or nativist can really leverage environmental reasons to just reinforce white supremacy. And [philosopher] Betsy Harman calls that a kind of “green hate.” This is something that I spent the first chunk of my career thinking about. The ways of the environmental movement. Environmental ideas and emotions, can actually cause greater social injustice. Trying to tease those things apart. 

And when I moved to thinking about climate anxiety, I thought I was kind of jumping track entirely and doing something totally different. But I've seen over the few years that I've been researching it, all of the ways that there's some parallels there. And the ways that emotion, environmental emotion in particular… But big emotions leverage these kinds of fascist tendencies. And can, and we see it in lots of places, underwrite some, some serious violence, right? So we see this in the El Paso shootings. We saw this in Buffalo. With the great replacement theory. And we saw this in Christchurch, of course. This notion of the inconvenient truth being with all these immigrants is somehow a problem in the larger climate story. And so the climate anxiety being, you know, leveraged for social injustice. For mass violence. Is something I have great concern about. 

And so, you know, while we're thinking about coping strategies. Or how to transform it into climate action. And all these other wonderful things. Or how to live a good life, despite any of it. I also want us to just make sure we're always paying attention to how it's underwriting some of this more nefarious stuff. Including eco-fascism. This desire for purity. This desire for binary thinking. For ideological clarity that comes with just saying, you know, wipe all the people off the planet who are causing these problems in the first place.

Doherty: And that, you know, I just want to give a shout out to the whole concept of environmental studies as a discipline. And then just, listeners, I mean, some of the listeners, you know, will know about this because they've studied this. Or they've had an environmental studies course. But a lot of people aren't aware. One of the benefits of the university is these kinds of dialogues, you know. Environmental Studies is [a] great, very diverse area. Even different kinds of environmental studies programs, as you know Sarah, are quite different in their focus and things like that. But it allows us to talk about these really deep, much more nuanced discussions than you get in the media. And things like that. 

When I was in graduate school at Antioch New England. In my clinical psychology doctorate, I moonlighted in the environmental studies program for a while. That's because it was where all my tribe was, and, you know, with [instructors like] Mitch Thomashow and Cindy Thomashow. A lot of these interesting folks. And it's funny. When I trained therapists, they asked me, how did you get to do all this kind of stuff? And I often tell them, oh, it didn't come out of psychology, you know. The stuff I do didn't come out of clinical psychology. I had to go find it in other areas, like in environmental studies, you know. Where people were talking about their environmental identity and ecological identity and all this sort of stuff. So I just want to give a shout out to environmental studies, folks.

Jaquette Ray: And I want to give a shout out to the therapists and the clinical psychologists too. Because, you know, I think there's a potential real tension between these worlds. As you sort are hinting out, Thomas. And yet there's so much rich stuff happening at the ecotone between them that is really exciting. The conversations I'm having with CPA. Conversations I get to have with people like Renee Lertzman and other folks who are trying to be in this space in between is fantastic. And I want to put a plug in if that's okay, for a conference that Blanche Verlie out of Australia, who's written Learning to Live Through the Anthropocene, recently, a book she's just published. And Jade Sasser, who's at UC Riverside [interviewed in our podcast in Season 1, Episode 8]  is putting together a conference that's exactly trying to build out that connection on climate justice and the politics of emotion in April at UC Riverside. And so if there's any interest in people wanting to come and participate. Or, you know, visit. It will be in person, which I know makes it a challenge. 

But the conversation that's happening around climate and emotions in the world of psychology is really rich and exciting. But Jade and Blanche, and I really want to make sure also that there's a scholarly intervention around the politics of emotion. Which is sort of what you're hinting at there, Thomas. About how environmental studies kind of gave you that lens to think about. These are political artifacts, emotions, you know. And they're actually driving … they're creating politics, too. So.

Doherty: Yeah, we'll definitely put a link in our show notes to that conference. And it is right up our alley in the climate change and happiness area. We've got a little more time. I know we want to cycle back to what it means to be happy. Because that's another thing to interrogate as you talk about, Sarah, in your book, interrogating happiness. Which simply, of course listeners … it doesn't mean “putting happiness in a chair and shining a bright light on it, and slapping it around” interrogate. It means let's look deeply at different sides of this. And let's look from one side. And let's look from the other. And let's really go outside of our existing, you know, mental models, right? That's what it means to interrogate something. But, you know, what do you think Panu? I know you spend a lot of your time interrogating happiness, Panu. So what are you thinking here?

Pihkala: Yeah. And you know, happiness is a very strong figure. It can take quite a lot of interrogation. And it may seem  that it's breaking up but still this person perseveres. Especially if we are talking about happiness in the deeper sense as we are trying to do in this podcast. Not exactly, just like the old philosopher Aristotle did. But of course linked with that. You know, deeper values and meaning in life. And, Sarah, we haven't actually, I think ever spoken directly about happiness. How do you see that concept? What's your thoughts on that?

Jaquette Ray: Yes, thank you. I love this topic. And I'm so delighted to be on this podcast, because it has that word in it. So I'm really glad we're going to talk about it. Yeah. Well, there's the sort of usual critique of it that you can imagine. And I put it in the book, too. Which is that the myth of happiness is actually the root of a lot of unhappiness. That we seek happiness in these sort of immediate gratification ways, because capitalism defines it that way for us. And so we actually find that those things are not making us happy. They're making us quite unhappy. And that toxic positivity means that we put all people's, you know, so-called negative or uncomfortable emotions like despair, anxiety, depression, anger, into the privacy of the therapy room. You know, you cope with that yourself. And I was told by my dean, when I first started telling him about all of my students' emotional responses to this stuff. You know, I thought to myself, we need to really reinvent the institution here. And he said, send them to CAPS (the counseling center). You have 15 minutes to spend with them. For anything else besides academics, they need to go to counseling and psychology services. 

And this really clear divide between what happens in the classroom, what happens in the therapy room. These things in the classroom are content. They're political. They're public. And whether they need mental health help, is something that they can call their mom about, or go to therapy about or whatever. And that division, I think, is really part of what does us a disservice. That sort of toxic positivity culture. And then there's the other side of the coin. And also. Or the both and about all this is that, you know, despair, anger, anxiety, fear. While they are very motivating, they can actually push people into new transformative places of action. They, for the long term, do not actually generate the kind of energy and resilience that we're all going to need to engage in this work. 

And so the real sense of what might be called emotional intelligence, or climate wisdom, I prefer to think of it as. Around the utility of long term spending time with those cortisol and emotions and hormones flushing through our bodies. And in an amygdala hijack situation outside of our window of tolerance. I'm using all of your psychology's ideas now, right? It doesn't actually serve the climate, right? It doesn't serve us and it doesn't serve the climate. So I do actually like thinking about the role of other things, right? That the negativity bias in our brains and in culture, is not actually the reality we live in, right? That's not actually really our reality. That is, you know, a negative frame of reality. 

And so I'm always asking what else is true? What is it that we love that we have fear about getting lost? What is it that we love that we have anxiety that's threatened, let's focus on feeding what we want to grow. And those positive dopamine hits and emotions. And, you know, the seeds that those plant create a feedback loop that keeps us coming back for more. And so there is a real role for happiness and for pleasure and desire. And many people will say the climate problem has generated some of the happiest times of their lives. Because they plugged into the community, because they found a sense of purpose. So, you know, we think about the real role that these positive or more pleasant emotions necessarily have in the movement. Are there to be cultivated for sure.

Doherty: Yeah.

Pihkala: Yeah, thanks, Sarah. That connects with a lot of topics we've touched upon with various guests along the way. And I couldn't agree more personally. And all this sense of meaningfulness and connection that people have been finding. But also something that I've actually never put into English. I've been using it in Finnish called “arkipäivän tilastoimaton hyvyys”. Which means uncounted everyday goodness.

Jaquette Ray: I love that. 

Pihkala: Now this is a sort of an on the fly translation, but there's so much of that happening in the world which never gets charted in any axes of the more capitalist [chart].

Jaquette Ray: Yes, I was just reading a bio, an interview with Mike Davis, whois of course, the famous Los Angeles and California critic who I love too. And he says there's so much “unmobilized love” out there. And it's similar to unaccounted for goodness. You know, what happens if we mobilize all this love that we feel instead of thinking about all the things that we fear, you know? I mean, those are all legitimate. We all have to have all those emotions, but they do stymie some of our best potential. 

Doherty: Yeah. I’m taking some notes and I was going to write “unmobilized love” and my spellcheck said “did you mean ‘immobilized love’?” So we have “immobilized love” and “mobilized love.” So that's great. That’s what’s nice about these dialogues. Feelings are wild. That’s part of environmental emotional intelligence. Feelings just come up as we’re doing things. So happiness is wild too. It will pop up like a weed sometimes unaccounted for. 

Jaquette Ray: I love that too. 

Doherty: Thank you.  We’re going to wrap up here. As we’re talking I just want to add another note for our links. Phillip Cushman died recently. The scholar, Phillip Cushman. And people might know about him. He had a book Constructing the Self, Constructing America, which is about this myth of happiness. So he’s one of these thinkers that’s been talked about recently in my circles that helped people to understand this whole idea of the “empty self.” And this kind of, you know, corporate capitalist kind of self. That sense of emptiness. Things like that. Critical psychology. So, I just want to put a note about that. Another thing for people to be thinking about. 

Well where are you all going for the rest of your days or evenings as we wrap up? Sarah, what’s the rest of your day look like? You’re just starting over there.

Jaquette Ray: Yeah. I have two book talks to give. 

Doherty: Oh, wow.

Jaquette Ray: Back to back. Which I’m really excited about. There’s been a couple weeks there of nothing. Kind of ready to go and do that. And I have a discussion and I’m really excited. With the founder of One Earth Sangha. Christin Barker. She and I have a chat later today. And this means that I can’t coach my kid’s soccer practice this evening. I have to have an assistant cover me. So I’m a little bummed about that. But, yeah I have mostly a day full of climate emotion work which is what I wanted to have my life look like when I took a leave of absence from my job at Cal Poly. It’s delightful even though I know it’s the topic many people think of as grim. But it gives me great - to go to that point - it gives me a great sense of satisfaction to be able to spend so much of my energy thinking about it today. 

Pihkala:  Very glad to hear, Sarah. And it’s evening in Helsinki and autumn is coming so it’s actually getting dark now, also. I just heard the door which means that our oldest son came back home from choir practice. And the younger one has been home because he has had a slight cold. And according to the rules now even if you have some slight flu, you have to stay home. So he’s been with me. I’ve been doing research on grief theory and ecological issues and sometimes throwing Finnish baseball with him. It’s been my day. But I’ve been very glad about this conversation, Sarah and Thomas. And we’ll be posting links also to the Existential Toolkit stuff that you can access online. And there’s a book coming out … co edited by Sarah and we’ll put the link too to Sarah’s website also, there’s different things there. But thanks a lot for coming, from my part.

Jaquette Ray: Well, it’s been a pleasure. 

Doherty: Thanks again Sarah. It was so nice to meet you – mostly – in person here. And make a connection with you. I look forward to more. And maybe trying to find my way down to Riverside in the spring because I’m sort of nearby there for that meeting. And I got my daughter off to school. I’m going to be doing climate psychology things today too. So there are some of us out there that’s what we do. And there’s a lot of people around the world. A lot of the listeners do good work all day in different ways in life. So I want to honor all of that. And you all take care of yourselves. And I look forward to seeing you further down the path. 

Pihkala: Take care.  

image credit | Kristopher Roller

In this episode, Thomas and Panu spoke with their 23-year-old colleague Isabel Coppola, a recent graduate of the University of Vermont and a Fulbright Scholar who has studied with Panu in Finland. Isabel has been an intern on the Climate Change and Happiness podcast over the last year and has been intimately involved in the creation of episodes and transcripts, and in answering listeners’ email messages. Isabel shared lessons from her thesis “Ecoanxiety in the Climate Generation: Is Action an Antidote?” She discussed her favorite CCH podcast episodes and her future plans. Isabel also reflected on her own lived experience of coping with her “unhinged anxiety” about climate change in her teenage years, and recognition of her relative privilege growing up in a picturesque forested town in New England in the US. Panu added insights about climate emotions and Thomas about environmental identity. Join us for a discussion of a young scholar’s early journey. 

• Isabel Coppola (2021) Eco-Anxiety in “the Climate Generation”: Is Action an Antidote?

• Thomas and other experts spoke on BBC Radio’s Bringing Up Britain on "How should I talk to my children about climate change?"

• Panu is an author of the recent Lancet Planetary Health Study "Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey" 

• A 2019 national survey in Finland about climate emotions

Forthcoming

image credit | Ian @travelsnips

In Season 2, Episode 1, Panu and Thomas reflect on the core question of the Climate Change and Happiness podcast (what does it mean to be “happy” in an era of far reaching and often catastrophic environmental changes) – and particularly how it feels “right now” in Summer 2022 as so many places cope with heat, fires and drought. While young people have known of climate change their entire life, adults and elders can look back to when they first heard about the concept and to the innocence or “blessed unknowing” (using Panu’s evocative term) of that time. Practicing “active hope” Panu and Thomas discussed positive events including the passage of long overdue climate legislation in the US and Thomas’s inspiring dialog with the young creators of the ClimaTwins podcast. To capture his emotional tone this summer, Thomas shared the concept of “In Medias Res” a story-telling device that plunges the audience right into the middle of the action without a preamble (from Latin, literally, into the midst of things). This can also become a conscious coping technique: Being mindful of our state of being thrown into the midst of the world, and pulling back like a film director to remind ourselves of our history and where we want our personal story to go. Panu identified with this, and listeners may find this helpful as well. As always, there are links to some of the topics and ideas that Panu and Thomas discussed.

• In Medias Res

• Alexander Hall 2022 That Fine Rain That Soaks You Through. Exploring the Role of Weather Lore, Cultural Identity, and Community Memory in Shaping Attitudes to Climate Change (on weather identity in Manchester, England)

• Thomas on the ClimaTwins Podcast

• Active hope as based on detailed and up-to-date information: Reasons to celebrate the recent Deficit Reduction Act.

• Looking back at James Hansen’s 1988 Congressional testimony 

Forthcoming

image credit |Mantas Hesthaven

Episode 17 features some intimate sharing between Panu and Thomas about their travels and adventures as young men and how this influenced their environmental identities. They looked back at their efforts as “apprentices” and “artisans” in their work on eco- and climate emotions, referencing the Soulcentric Developmental Model of US Depth Psychologist Bill Plotkin. Thomas recognized some key developmental journeys in his life: “going off to the big city,” finding his ancestral and natural place roots in Ireland, traveling “west” in the US to places like Alaska and Grand Canyon. Panu similarly reminisced about his formative youthful hiking experiences in Finland and Iceland. They discussed the process of wilderness therapy and rites of passage, and recognized the “pride of living outside of the culture” and being more attuned to wildness in people who do that work the world-over (as captured in journey narratives like “Into the Wild”). Panu discussed the ideals of spiritual pilgrimage and “slow travel” and Thomas echoed the Henry David Thoreau maxim, “The swiftest traveler goes afoot.” Panu also noted that “the innocence of traveling is strongly challenged” in our era of “flight shame,” now that we need to be aware of the carbon footprint of our life journeys. This adds a unique challenge for young people. Panu mused: Can there be intergenerational justice about travel, and could young people have carbon credits to partake of the same youthful travels that their forebears took for granted? Or can cleaner travel systems like rail be expanded? We can reasonably think of the global climate emergency as a multi-generational planetary rite of passage with numerous opportunities for personal and collective quests, heroic acts, and dealing with the dark side of human nature and the shadow sides of our societies and industrial economies. Our listeners are invited to consider their own life journeys, young adult migrations, current quests, and what pace is most healthy for them at this point in their lives. 

• Depth Psychologist and Rite of Passage Facilitator Bill Plotkin

• Animas Valley Institute

• A Short Introduction to the Eco-Soulcentric Developmental Wheel: Stages of Life, Rites of Passage, and Cultural Transformation

• Ben Wright 2021 Revisiting Into the Wild

• Academic articles on eco-emotions and tourism and reasons people give for stopping flying due to climate change 

Forthcoming

image credit | Eddie Kopp

In Episode 16, Thomas and Panu had an enlightening conversation with Elin Kelsey, environmental educator and author of Hope Matters. Panu and Elin spoke of their collaborations in Finland and the importance of taking time for reflection in the “culture of urgency” we have about climate change. Elin shared the concept of “solutions journalism” and noted that only 2-3% of news we hear about climate change discusses currently available solutions. The insight is that a scarcity of hope is also a perceptual issue—given the problem-oriented biases of academia, journalism and scientific reports, we do not get enough positive information to feed a healthy sense of hope about progress addressing the climate emergency. Panu, Elin and Thomas considered early examples of hope practices, the current solutions-focused influencing of Tik-Tok science educator Alaina Wood (aka The Garbage Queen), detours like “bright-siding” and toxic forms of hope and negativity, and the healthy place for moments of hopelessness in our flow of emotions as they can signal when an old path is done and new path needs to begin. Join us and update your ideas about hope! 

• Elin Kelsey and Hope Matters

• Elin’s work with social media influencers

• Video of a recent event with Elin, Panu and others in Helsinki 

• Finland's Climate University (openly available online courses)

• Solutions Journalism Story Tracker

• Tik Tok science communicator Alaina Wood and her upbeat, positive climate news

• Thomas and Alaina and NBC’s Gadi Schwartz speaking at recent Aspen Ideas Festival

• Thomas recognizes Dick and Jeanne Roy, longtime Portland, Oregon environmental activists and their “Practice of Hope” workshops dating to 2005. See 2011 video

• On what “meaning in life” means… (simply put: a life that is worthy of attention, has a  purpose and makes sense).

• Psychologist and activist Joel Vos’ book on Meaning of life (Panu’s recommendation) and his online video about the topic 

• Panu’s two articles about hope, despair and tragedy: “Environmental Education After Sustainability: Hope in the Midst of Tragedy” (2017) and “Eco-anxiety, Tragedy, and Hope” (2018)

• Darren Webb on “Modes of Hoping” 

Forthcoming.

image credit |Daniel Schludi

Part 2 of our exploration of climate emotions through music: Thomas’s playlist “Shifting Basslines of the Cornucopians” — its title inspired by the Snapped Ankles number, and having a double meaning: Shifting bass lines in the music that inspires us and “Shifting Baselines” in how each generation perceives the natural world. As Thomas notes: “My themes are water and fire, being a hostage to Capitalism and Climate Change, finding refuge, transformation, and our all-togetherness during these challenging times. As Courtney John sings “Yes we are sailing in a different boat. But we are sailing in the same ocean.” In my mix, I am inspired by a variety of sources, the old time music of the Carter Family, the cathartic punk of The Thermals, the immersive ‘Become…’ series of Alaskan composer John Luther Adams, and the tribal techno of ‘Land Back.’ We are nostalgic (and solastalgic) about the beautiful ‘Flatlands’ in ‘The World We Knew’ while the ‘Sword of Damocles’ hangs over our heads. In this ‘Cruel Summer’ with ‘No Snow on the Mountain’ we hope that ‘Somewhere’ there is a place for us.”

Let us know about the music that inspires you to express your climate feelings.

• Thomas’s Playlist

• Storm Warning, Finland

• KEXP, Seattle, Washington, USA

• Music Declares Emergency, United Kingdom

• The Shifting Baseline Problem: Explanation, Findings and Findings

• Accelerando: Anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen on the age of acceleration.

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity. 

[music: “CC&H theme music”]  

Introduction voice:  Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.

Thomas Doherty: Hello, I am Thomas Doherty. 

Panu Pihkala: And, I am Panu Pihkala. 

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. Our podcast for people around the world, around the globe, who are thinking deeply about the personal side of climate change. Including their feelings and responses to the climate crisis. And some episodes I've been looking forward to, Panu: Talking about music and playlists—and how we can create our own kind of climate list, a climate playlist of songs that evoke [our] climate change feelings. Emotions and just sensations. And we've been chatting a little bit about your playlist. And I'm going to talk about mine. Tell me a little bit about music and the role of music for you, Panu, in your life and how it links with climate change for you?

Pihkala: Yeah. We discussed it in the previous episode, if you listened to that already. Music is a big part of both of our lives and we both play some instruments. For me, I started with piano lessons when I was five years old. My older sister played the piano very well. And I was like “why do I have to learn this?” So it was really a lack of motivation. I learned the basics and then let it go. But then I got excited about popular music when I was about 13 and started to play some more. And then after confirmation school camps, which are [a] very popular thing in Finland still, you know, young people [were] playing together. So then I got excited and started to play the piano really a lot and moved on into improvising a bit later on. So that's the sort of main thing that I do within instruments. And it also helps greatly with emotional expression. But how about you, Thomas? Would you like to share something about your history and relationship with music?

Doherty: Yes, Panu. I'm music lover: a “musicophile”. And it's always music. Popular music in particular has always been really important to me and my identity. I've been lucky enough to live in key places for music like New York City in the late 80s. And Seattle in the early 90s. And Portland where I live now. And so, I think music, as I was saying, you know, earlier when we were talking about this … Music allows us to express ourselves. Express our feelings in a way that sometimes we don't have a word for. And also how we want to feel. You know, some of my playlist songs are upbeat, danceable music. And they might be very political and very radical, but they're also, there's a dancing energy in there.

So I'm influenced by post-punk music like Gang of Four. You know, that makes songs that both can be danceable and political. So, you know we're so embedded in this system. The dark ecology of a modern world. And the hyper objects of climate change [as we] talked about in past episodes with Timothy Morton's idea. So the music, I think, more than most things helps me to express that. And you'll see that come out in my playlist. Some of that sense of being embedded in a system. Sometimes that's beyond our control.

Pihkala: Yeah that's a very cool point, Thomas. And music is funny in the way that it can combine both the darkness and light. And, of course, many artists use this intentionally. And creating interesting mixes of both gravity and lightness. And it's great that music can spark so many things. Even the same song for different persons, or for the same person in different parts of life. So it's very rich. Would you like to share a bit about your playlist in general? What did you have in mind when doing this difficult job of selecting songs?

Doherty: Yeah I'll launch into the playlist here in a second. I want to recognize groups like Music Declares Emergency in the UK and I think it's myrskyvaroitus.

Pihkala: Myrskyvaroitus.

Doherty: Myrskyvaroitus. Storm Warning. The group in Finland. These are musicians working for the climate. So there are musicians that not only are expressing themselves. Doing expressions on our behalf. But also taking action in terms of climate. Even sustainability within the music business. And addressing the carbon impact of the music industry. So I want to shout out to them. And to KEXP which is a station. An international station based in Seattle near where I live that I've been a long time listener and supporter. And it's where I get a lot of my musical community. I wanna mention them. But we'll have links to some of these things in our show notes. I'm going to launch it. And then Panu just feel free to interrupt me as I'm going.

My playlist is called “Shifting Baselines of the Cornucopians.” It comes from the title of a song by Snapped Ankles. A British band that I'll talk about a little bit. But that title speaks to me. Shifting Baselines obviously, you know, is a double entendre there. It's bass music, but then shifting baselines is this idea of how our baselines about what the world is keep shifting. Each generation we lose perspective on what's a healthy world and we have to keep reminding ourselves what we're striving for as some parts of the world become more degraded. Or we lose things from the past like species and places. And cornucopians, you know, is this idea of the endless, you know, the endless ability of capitalism to keep creating things. And endless growth. This cornucopian idea in economics is something that is a bit of a religion as you know. And we have to be careful about that because it isn't necessarily true. We do live on a planet. So this Shifting Baselines of the Cornucopians is kind of a lot in the title.

Pihkala: That's a very interesting title. And a lot packed into that song. And quite heavy criticism of such a worldview where only money matters. Money or wealth is also present in the opening song, I noticed: "Mining for Gold'. And you have several themes in the playlist.

Doherty: Yeah. My opening song is a classic from the Cowboy Junkies “Mining for Gold” from their 1987 Trinity Sessions record. Which is a very important, beautiful one that I've listened to for many years. And the voice of Margot Timmons there. And this theme of the song. It's an old mining song. Hardrock mining song updated for the late 20th century. But it does speak to this idea of going to work. And this paradox of, you know, "I feel like I'm dying from mining for gold" and I think that's a very telling line just in our modern world. And it takes a new resonance during the era of climate change. This idea that we're trapped in systems that we're working through that are actually hurting us and even killing us. And that just becomes plainer and plainer as life goes on. And so there's an economic kind of trapped theme in my playlist. Certainly the "Shifting Baselines' ' song from Snapped Ankles as well even though that's an upbeat dance number. As they say "it's a great time to be alive if you only you've got some funds." So it speaks to inequality.

Of course, I've got the classic George Harrison song "I Me Mine." The “naked” [production] version of that song. And that I think is one of the greatest of his songs. And it speaks to that. I think we could play the "I Me Mine" song in the background as the COP 26 and 27 meetings occur. And it really puts a context to the world that we live in. And so there's definitely an economic sort of idea here that weaves through. I mean it's the economics and there's also fire and water. Those are the other themes in my playlist. 

Pihkala: Yeah. Before going into fire and water, it's that sort of hell and high water theme. We'll hear about that very soon. But stopping for a second. These two dimensions both have an implicatedness. Being a climate hostage as you have often described it, Thomas. And then also this greed element—"I Me Mine"—which of course can be sort of trapped. That people very easily get swept into because many of the values and mores are such in our societies. It also brings a link to one of the Finnish songs in my playlist, this "Kynnet, Kynnet", "Nails, Nails." Which has a line that — "minä minä minä muiden ilmaston pilaa." Which is literally translated "me me me ruins other people's climate." So that was a funny point of connection between "I Me Mine" on your playlist and this Finnish song of mine. How about this fire and water? Sort of contradictory elements, but both very closely related to climate change, of course. 

Doherty: Yeah. I mean the second song on my playlist is a cover of the 80s song "Cruel Summer." Another classic 80s song. A recent cover by the artist Joon. But, again, these are songs that capture the ominous nature of the modern world. "Cruel Summer" is somewhat of a lightweight kind of pop song that evokes other summery pop songs — of being away from your loved ones or being lonely in the city. But the "Cruel Summer" the way the tone is — "it was a cruel summer." You know, the last few summers have been quite cruel here where I live. They've been hot. We've had these heat disasters. And so it takes on this ominous tone. And then the era of Covid as well. This idea of being isolated and in the heat dome. I thought that "Cruel Summer" really captured that for me.  

And then "The People Under the Stairs" a classic LA, Los Angeles [hip hop] duo. Their “The effects of climate change on densely populated areas…” is a great rap song that really gets into the — I think it actually does better than some research studies on extreme heat and how it affects people in neighborhoods and in communities. And, you know, speaking to the tension and the violence and the discomfort. So that song really captures some of the heat that we've been experiencing.

 And then, again, an old song by the Carter Family, "When the World's on Fire." Which is an old gospel song. But, you know, it has that kind of biblical fire element to it. But of course the tune is the same tune that, you know, Woody Guthrie used for "This Land is Your Land." The classic folk tune to the song. And so it's got an eerie resonance when we have the evocation of "This Land is Your Land" and "When the Worlds on Fire." So I think, again it captures the multiple feelings that are coming up, you know, around this work. 

Pihkala: Yeah. And it comes close to people like it has for you. The heat waves were quite severe in the region where you were living as you described. So, talking about the direct impacts, also. In addition to the indirect and ambient ones as you and Susan Clayton put it years ago. Talking about the impact of climate change. And of course because I have this history with religion and theology, it was interesting to see several songs that make quite an implicit connection with religion. For example, when listening to this Carter Family song, which was new for me. There were lots of new songs in your playlist for me. And that was very interesting. I couldn't help thinking about this sort of religious type of denial of the climate reality. Which is one aspect of the interconnection between religion and climate change. There's several others, like very ardent climate activism that we also see among some religious people. But also these various forms of disavowal. Would you like to speak some more of this, you know, religion connotations in some of these songs?

Doherty: Yeah. There's a strong religious theme in the Thermals’ "Here's Your Future." The Thermals and there's also a cathartic element in this playlist as well. And the Thermals is a classic punk band from my town of Portland, Oregon. And, well, I'll leave it to the listeners to find that song. But it really evokes biblical floods. Again that brings us into the water theme. But it really is kind of a lashing song about really throwing the future into our face, so to speak. And it really, I think, like some of your songs that you shared. You know, like the Smashing Pumpkins song you shared in your playlist. You know, it is very cathartic. Gets some of our anger and some of our feelings out.

And then we have the water theme that is through this in terms of the ocean. I mean there's this “Strange Boat” song by the Waterboys. Another classic song. It just evokes this journey that we're all on in the modern world. It's like being in a strange boat, in a strange sea. Just a beautiful kind of reflective song. And Courtney John, kind of a roots reggae song. "Yes we are living in different boats but we're on the same ocean." From his Ecosystem album. So it speaks to just being all together. We're all together on the same ocean here.

Pihkala: Yeah. There's several songs in your playlist which very strongly speak about the theme of journey. And also that we are in this together. But also, speaking about strange times. So in a way I thought that this "Strange Boat" song captures many of the elements. But I think, also from our contemporary reality. That's of course part of the anxiety, literally speaking, because there's so much uncertainty. And not all climate anxiety is strong anxiety. There's also just the uncertainty and thinking about what we should do and where we should try to sail with this company that we have. 

Doherty: Yeah, exactly. And there's the recent song from the group James, "Wherever It Takes Us." You know, and I know some of the members of that group were affected by Covid. And by fires and things. So the "Wherever It Takes Us" song is kind of a dizzying kind of anthemic song. But it also evokes someone really fleeing from a disaster and just finding some refuge in a car. Maybe from a fire. Or from smoke. And then this idea "We're all in wherever it takes us. We're all in it and it breaks and it shapes us. We're all in wherever it takes us." So it's like we're all in this together. And we're all in this journey. The word of the day on my dictionary app was accelerando. An Italian word for something that's speeding up. So there's an accelerando sort of note to the music, but also to our world. And we're all on this journey that's speeding up. 

Pihkala: Yeah. That's very interesting. And the song is very poignant. I was quite struck by this song. It's disturbing and it's powerful and very interesting. There's a lot to take in. And this accelerando of course links with the work of some anthropologists who have spoken about Age of Acceleration. Describing the 20th century and the speed. Of course this theme of trying to ride a car somewhere, which sort of can be escaping, but it can also be a need to survive amidst very strange circumstances. So there's lots of symbolic elements here. 

Doherty: Yeah. And just, you know, The Weather Station. Tamara Lindeman shows up in both of our lists. This Canadian artist who goes by Weather Station. I had a chance to see her and her band play in Portland nearby at Mississippi Studios here just the other week. She's, you know, gotten some press for her sophisticated take on climate consciousness. And understanding of some of the feelings. At least just naming this. And, you know, again this news intake. Her lyric "thinking I should get all this dying off my mind. I should really know better than to read the headlines. Does it matter if I see it? No really can I not just cover my eyes?" That speaks to this kind of idea of tuning in, tuning out. You know, the “Sword of Damocles” – a classic song from Lou Reed’s "Magic and Loss." Which is a whole work. It's about illness, cancer and AIDs. And various themes. Medical themes. What a beautiful album. But the Sword of Damocles, this idea, this thing is hanging over our heads. And just speaking to someone who's having [an illness], you know, in a hospital bed. And thinking about their end of life, you know. So it evokes some feelings I think people have about the state of the world. 

Pihkala: Yeah. The song "The Atlantic" is very striking also. And links with the stuff that's going on in the world, currently when we are recording this. There's the war in Ukraine and the latest very gloomy IPCC report has come out. And many of my colleagues in the University are also having difficulty just concentrating on their work. And this topic of limiting your media diet. That you, Thomas, have been speaking about for a long time. And we've also discussed it in the podcast. So that's been very important, also in relation to contemporary times. I did notice that you have this element of transformation also in some of these songs. And some hints towards sort of eco-psychological notions. Would you like to dwell a bit on that?

Doherty: Yeah. Yeah, that's where this playlist goes. I mean there's this "No Snow on the Mountain." This idea from the band Nada Surf. Just the reality of no snow on the mountain. This kind of ironic use of the Frank Sinatra song “The World We Knew." ["Over and over I keep thinking over the world we knew."] This old kind of loungey Frank Sinatra song, but it really speaks to the world that we knew. The world that we knew, it's going away. It's gone. It's lost. It's slipping from our fingers. But solace, resistance, “Land Back.” This native song. This very strident dance techno-native song, “Land Back.” So it speaks to really reclaiming the land. Reclaiming our place, you know. And "Raconte-moi une histoire" You know, the M83 song. The beautiful song of the young girl's voice with the frog. You know, it really sort of opens us up to global consciousness. And the beauty of global consciousness. And the connecting that we have. So there is definitely transformation in here. Then there's this sort of deeper water, you know, solace theme that comes up as well. 

Pihkala: Yeah. And I know that you are very fond of John Luther Adams. The composer who makes these long nature-themed compositions, like this “Become River”, also at the latter part of the playlist. And I also thought about including M83's "Outro" in my playlist, but opted [to] not. But that sort of outro you have here "Somewhere" from West Side Story. So, is that a glimmer of hope or a manifestation of hope at the end of the playlist?

Doherty: Yes. Yeah, I mean there's a song "Flatlands" by the artist Mark Lanegan, who is one of my favorite all time artists and we just lost him. He just died this past week. And so of his many beautiful songs, "Flatlands" is a beautiful song. A cover song. But it kind of evokes beautiful, calm places. Flatlands. Farms. Trees. I think it's what we all yearn for. It's just a place to be on the planet that's safe and nurturing. Some place that we can be. And so I want to really have that image. And then again, the "Troubled Waters" song from Michael Hurley.  The classic American kind of out-there folk music.

And then we have this "Troubled Waters" in the Flatlands. You know, flatlands are usually flooded, obviously. And then John Luther Adams. It's not an exaggeration to say it was kind of life changing to come to John Luther Adams' music. And his beautiful orchestral works "Become River", "Become Ocean," and "Become Desert."  And I think "Become River" is, you know, consciously climate change-related. But it really embodies being a river from the earliest ice and snow. Through the huge, wide Ganges Delta. The music embodies being a river. And it does have that ominous rising waters at the end that speaks to both, you know, ocean [and sea level] rise. And yes, having recently seen the new version of West Side Story. And sort of being aware of this somewhere. There's this lighter, reprise again. This somewhere, a place for us. So I do believe there is a place for us. You know, there is a place for us somewhere. And we're going to find it, and we're all working toward that together on this strange boat, you know, that we're on right now. So that's it. Yeah. I think that covers my list.

Pihkala: Yeah. That's a beautiful way to wrap it up. And, of course, water is sometimes used as a metaphor for both music and emotion. So I think it's very fitting. And dear listener, you can find our playlists on Spotify. You know the ambiguities related to Spotify as [a] platform. We are trying to live with this ambivalence. And please do share your playlists with us, also. Or your favorite songs which speak to you about living amidst the climate crisis. This is [the] Climate Change and Happiness podcast. We are interested in all things that are going on in these times.

Doherty: Yes, climatechangeandhappiness.com is where we live. And keep making music and keep listening to music. And take care.

Pihkala: Take care everyone.

image credit | FPVmat A

It has been said: “Where words leave off, music begins.” The climate emergency challenges us to find words for so many feelings: Loneliness and connection, pain and loss, endurance, dedication, creativity and joy. In this two-episode series, Panu and Thomas share personal music playlists based on a simple assignment: “Music and climate emotions.” Thomas and Panu discuss the important role music plays in their coping and wellbeing, and examples of climate change-focused musical endeavors. Panu begins with a selection of 15 tracks from a variety of artists. He notes “this playlist is an emotional journey. The atmospheres … are more important than the lyrics, but some tracks have also been selected because of their lyrics. The playlist does follow roughly a process of crisis. There are fluctuations of sorrow and anger, but also of hope and beauty—as in our lives amidst the ecological crisis.” Music is a universal emotional language. Listen along and let us know about the music that inspires you to express your climate feelings. 

• Panu’s Playlist 

• Panu’s blog post about his playlist

• Music Declares Emergency, United Kingdom

• Storm Warning, Finland

• KEXP, Seattle, Washington, USA

• A music video of Moby’s “Why does my heart feel so bad” (2021 version) directed & animated by Steve Cutts 

• The Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman on climate grief 

• Bearing witness to some recent Spotify controversies

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity. 

[music: “CC&H theme music”]  

Introduction voice:  Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.

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

Panu Pihkala: And I'm Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. Our podcast. A show for people around the globe who are thinking deeply about the personal side of climate change. Particularly their emotional responses and their feelings. And today this is a special episode. I have looked forward to. Panu and I are both musicophiles, music lovers of various genres. And today we're working on some episodes that capture some music that we love that also channels some of our feelings and impressions about global climate change. And so we're going to get into this a little bit. Panu, I know we've chatted at length about music and what it means to us. But tell me some thoughts you have about this climate change and music idea.

Pihkala: Yeah. Greetings everyone. And very glad to be talking about music. That's a very important aspect of life for me. And in many ways: the written stuff, the melodies... They are also related to the daily flow of life. But in practice, listening to various kinds of music during the day is something I do. I also play a couple of instruments. Not in any professional manner, but that's also great for emotional release, actually. That wasn't the original reason I had when I started playing them, but later on I found that that's very important also in that regard. But how about you, Thomas? What's the role of music in your life?

Doherty: Ah, similar to yourself, Panu. I have just always been—music has always been a close companion to me. You know, when I talk to people about emotional expression and using a feelings list. You know, describing how you're feeling and also how you might want to feel and the feelings you might want to cultivate, I think music is like that for me. It reflects back to me how I am feeling. Like the poetry and the tones and the rhythm and the melody can express things that I can't personally express. Puts into words and sounds what I'm feeling. But also like things that I reach towards. Things that boost me. And ways of being that I want to inhabit in my life. So music is both of those things for me. And it's just a part of my life. Yeah. 

And only recently in the last several years, I've taken up drumming. So I do some drumming on a vintage drum kit that's a little older than I am. And so it's fun. That was a rebirth of music in a whole other way for me: to be more of a musician myself. And I want to name - we've got a lot of things going on outside in the world: The day that we're recording we have violence in the Ukraine. And we have IPCC reports coming out. Supreme Court deliberations on momentous laws. So there's a lot going on in the world. And I think this music helps us to … channel our various impressions and things like that. Anything particular before we get started? Some orientation for our listeners about music in Finland? Or about this playlist that you're going to describe? Your playlist: how did that come together? 

Pihkala: Yes. We came up with the idea of each of us doing a playlist about the theme of the podcast. And mine is focused on climate emotions. Different kinds of them. And since I am coming from Finland and we have a lively music scene in Finland—actually so lively that we've been able to export some of our musicians to the states, for example, at least on temporary loans—I wanted to include, also, some Finnish songs into my playlist. I'm fully aware that not too many people internationally have learned the Finnish language, but there's the melody and the writing. There's also a plan for me to write a bit about this playlist and I'll explain something about the lyrics and the selection as we will also be doing live now.

Doherty: Yeah. And I want to just shout out. There's obviously music as an expressive art. But we know there's musicians that are active in climate work and, of our listeners, there're musicians active in all kinds of things. I know there’s the Music Declares Emergency group in the UK that I've followed. That is really trying to work on sustainability in the music business. And I know there's the Storm Warning group in Finland that you've described. The musicians working for the climate. So I just want to shout out to those folks. And there's stations like KEXP in Seattle here near where I live in the United States that are very active in supporting the community and supporting people as we go through our challenges in the modern world. So there's a lot of levels to this. But we're really on the expressive side. And not the obvious expressive side. None of these are necessarily obviously about climate change directly, but they evoke certain things and that's the angle here. So yeah. Panu, why don't you launch into talking about your climate emotions playlist. And we'll see what it sounds and looks like. 

Pihkala: Definitely, Thomas. And for now we are using Spotify as a platform. We'll also share these playlists so that you can listen to them. And life has these strong ambiguities and ambivalences, which are sort of standard also in relation to the climate crisis. And also in relation to musical platforms such as Spotify. There's the controversy around different ethical issues and we're aware of that [e.g., podcasts spreading disinformation, artists leaving in protest]. But for now we are sort of accepting the ambivalence even though that's partly painful. And using Spotify as a platform. 

My playlist has 15 songs. There's a certain dramatic arc. Or actually a couple of them. It's possible to listen to just all of them but also from the beginning until song 11 or 12. That would be a sort of English arc. And then there's a couple of Finnish songs. And the last one, a long song by Mark Kozelek and Jimmy LeValle, ”Somehow the Wonder of Life Prevails”, is a sort of summary of many things in this playlist actually. So that's a sort of encore. An extra. A summary at the end. 

But the playlist also roughly follows a process of an emotional journey. Or a process of a crisis. Which, after-all, encountering the climate crisis is also: a kind of personal, psychological, social crisis. I'm not just using any, you know, black and white version of Elizabeth Kübler Ross's “Stages of grief” or anything like that. But there is a certain sequence going on from shock, and then variations of anger and sadness, before moving on with the process model towards light and also towards an increased ability to feel joy again. So it's not just gloomy songs, but there's several songs that speak to either climate sadness or climate anger.

Doherty: Then I know in Finland they have a saying, like in the US we say play "Free Bird" or play "Stairway to Heaven," but they say “Soittakaa ‘Paranoid.’”  So are you going to have Paranoid, Black Sabbath's song “Paranoid” on your playlist?

Pihkala: That's well pronounced, Thomas. You're proceeding well with your Finnish lessons. And it is indeed true that in almost every live gig in Finland somebody shouts "Soittakaa Paranoid." Usually the bands don't do it. But there's a history here. Thomas knows that I have one Black Sabbath song in my playlist. And the sort of multitude of heavy metal, hard rock bands coming out of Finland is of course something that lots of folks know internationally. Many of these Finnish hard rock bands have a following in Japan, for example. I didn't go very heavily into that. I did have a phase in my teenage years when I listened to a lot of heavy rock and that sort of thing. 

But I'm actually starting with a song by Moby called "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad." Which refers to this phenomena which has been quite common in history when people start to feel some kind of climate anxiety. That they are thinking "why do I actually feel so bad?" And it's not obvious often, especially if there's not a public discussion or recognition of this kind of discourses of emotional distress and motivation. One has to remember that climate anxiety is also about motivation to do something about the threats. So, “Why does my heart feel so bad” and the Reprise version (2021). Moby published a sort of album full of revised versions of many [his] key songs. And this one, also, has a quite striking music video actually. We'll put the link to the podcast website, also. Which has graphic depictions of ecological grief. Especially related to more than human animals. Moby is a famous animal rights and vegan activist, also. And those elements also show on the video. 

But that is followed by "Age of Reason" by Black Sabbath. A song which ends with a very fine electric guitar solo. Which is something that has helped me with many dark emotions. Perhaps that has links with my teenage years and the hard rock & heavy history. But the title of the song "Age of Reason" sort of plays with the "why does my heart feel so bad" element. So instead of an age of emotions we get an age of “reason”. And the lyrics of the song actually have points related to global crises. For example, if you listen to this part of the song [see Panu’s blog post for details] you'll notice that.

Doherty: Yeah I know the lyrics - "politics, religion, love and money too. It's what the world was built for, but not for me and you." So yes. It's a classic social commentary coming out of Black Sabbath. I appreciate that. And then I noticed we both have The Weather Station. The Weather Station is the one artist that's made it to both of our lists.

Pihkala: Yeah. Yeah that's a peculiar thing. And it ties in with this part in Black Sabbath's "Age of Reason" where there is "mass destruction hides the truth." This line. And then the Weather Station's name of the album is “Ignorance.” And that's of course a very interesting album related to climate emotions and anxiety. And Tamara Lindeman, the main artist behind The Weather Station, has been reading environmental psychologist Renée Lertzman's work. And it's interesting to have very high quality, popular music which is built also on understanding about climate psychology. And many of the lyrics are quite striking. I picked into my playlist a song called "Robber." Which is quite something. Also its music video. And one of the main themes of the song, at least for me, is the implicatedness which we have talked about in the podcast also. That we are all implicated whether we want or not. And then who's the robber and what are the means. [These are] Some of the questions that are being asked in the lyrics.

Doherty: Yeah. That's beautiful. I got a chance to see Tamara and her band play here in Portland at Mississippi Studios just near my house just a week or so ago. So that's great that you have her there. On your playlist. Yeah. Go on Panu. This is really fun.

Pihkala: Yeah. After the "Robber" the fourth song is a sort of classic rage and frustration song for many people from my generation: Smashing Pumpkins' "Bullet with Butterfly Wings." Which both stylistically and lyrically describes the frustration, you know, this famous line "despite all my rage I'm still just a rat in a cage." That speaks to many kinds of frustration. But for me, the song has always evoked images of frustration because of the social and political situation in the world, including ecological politics. And now I picked it here to depict frustration and anger and rage. Also feelings of helplessness because of the global ecological and climate crisis.

Doherty: So "despite all my rage I'm still just a rat in a cage" right? That's the lyric there. Despite all my rage I'm still a rat in a cage. And that's I think important. I don't know there's something about being a teen or a young person and seeing someone just name out these feelings. Something that we can grasp onto. So I appreciate that. And I think our listeners are appreciating it as well. Yeah.

Pihkala: Yeah. It's also linked to this wide topic of climate activism these days. And we know that many young people are very active in those movements. And that potential in teenage, being able to feel emotionally that moral outrage because of injustices. So that can be sometimes aggressive and even dangerous, but it's also very valuable in the world to be able to feel that moral outrage. But then my playlist goes more into the grief and sorrow territory. Although moral outrage is surfacing a couple of times. There's a very deep grief song by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds called "Sun Forest." Nick Cave actually lost his teenaged son and has done lots of songs which partly deal with that and other subjects of grief and sorrow. From this sort of dark waters, the playlist starts to move a bit more towards the light. The grief process goes on. 

There's a young Finnish artist called Suad. And her song "The Burn" which is in English. [An] interesting song and a great album. After that there's a Depeche Mode cover by Tori Amos. One of my old favorites. So "Enjoy the Silence." Which is, of course, quite [a] classic song in pop music. For me it speaks of a kind of existential intensity. And that's one of the reasons why I included it here. "All I ever wanted, All I ever needed, is here in my arms." A very existential framing for me. And for me, personally, connected to, for example, spending time with the kids. Even amidst these eras of the ecological crisis.

Doherty: Yeah. Go on.

Pihkala: Then there's a very special song by the Icelandic post rock band Sigur Rós called Njósnavélin. Sorry for the Icelanders or Sigur Rós for the pronunciation. They sometimes use their own language. Not just Icelandic but [an] even more original language. And that's a very important song personally for me. And it manages to include both lightness and gravity. And it has this element of what the Finnish word suloisenhaikeus is about. So that's one of these peculiar emotion words that we are always interested about in this podcast. So, haikeus is that feeling that you are happy and gratitude-filled about something but you also realize that it's fleeting and passing. So it's related to realized finitude. And suloinen means sweet. So it's sort of sweet and sad at the same time, this suloisenhaikeus. And that's also an existential feeling amidst these climate times I think. And for me the song Njósnavélin captures that. And if you listen to the whole album that's quite a ride through various kinds of emotions. And even in those times almost fifteen years ago, they did a music video of the opening song which is very much about eco-anxiety or nuclear anxiety or both of them. Depending on how you interpret the video. But that was also interesting. But that was the first song of the album. Not the Njósnavélin which I've included here.

Doherty: Yeah. And then you have this song by the artist. I'm not sure how they pronounce their name. snny. This young artist. “A Better World”. And there's a classic artist embedded in that song. I found that very interesting.

Pihkala: Yeah. It includes content from “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” The classic song by [Bob] Dylan. And this is a nod towards rap and hip hop, which I very much often appreciate. Of course there's many kinds of that. But I don't listen to it very extensively in my personal life. But the mood of this song is related to me for the experience that the world is changing in many ways, but there's also an effort to adapt to that change. And also pursue goals which are deemed valuable. So those are some of the meanings that that song has for me.

Doherty: As always, we have to remember that whatever age we are, there are people that are younger than us coming up. And they have other takes on the world. And they're just starting on their life journey. And so they're just maybe just for the first time discovering the music of Bob Dylan or some of these classic songs that we've kept close to us for our lives. So we have to make peace for their new reality as well. So I appreciate that. 

Pihkala: Yeah. I think that's right on. And in Finland, many rap and hip hop artists have made very interesting songs about the socio ecological crisis, also. I have especially one of those at the later part of the playlist. It's by Pyhimys, one of the most eminent rap artists in Finland. Called “Kynnet, Kynnet” [“Nails, nails”]. Which is a song about people losing their grip amidst the rapid changes in the contemporary world. Climate change is also mentioned in that song. And then by a young Finnish artist [Litku Klemetti], a sort of more wanderlust type of song which also has a lyrical point about climate change in the Finnish lyrics. But before those, there's two songs more about joy and empowerment. First one by a Canadian artist, Sandro Perri, with his Glissandro project, “Bolan Muppets”. That's quite indie stuff but I've liked it very much during the last ten years. I bought the album from a local store in Toronto once. And then there's perhaps surprisingly Katy Perry's “Roar.” We also need a sense of humor in these complex times. And I like the sort of conscious self-irony in the song and its music video. It has this, you know, “Eye of the Tiger” element. This determination that don't let other people grind you down. And finding your voice. But there's also this very humorous element in it.

Doherty: Yeah. And then this final song, the Mark Kozelek and Jimmy LaValle one. That's a beautiful song: “Somehow the Wonder of Life Prevails.” 

Pihkala: Yeah, that's quite a title for a song. And the song has many verses about the life experiences of the lyrical author. And then amidst all the trouble there's still that attitude that somehow the wonder of life always prevails. And I guess that would be a sort of summary of many things in this playlist.

Doherty: It's really beautiful. We're going to share these playlists. There was one song that I might steal from your playlist. You didn't get a chance to mention Godspeed You Black Emperor’s “First of the Last Glaciers.” Kind of a … as anyone [who] knows Godspeed's music it is a very stirring…architectural, instrumental, post-rock kind of composition. But to me, I kind of just bow my head and listen because it gets to some of the wordless feelings that we have about this issue. About climate change and a lot of the things that are besetting us. 

Pihkala: Yeah thanks for sharing that, Thomas. Their music has been very important for me, yeah.

Doherty: Well I think we have to wrap up or now, but this is the start of another trend for us of bringing in the arts and music. And I encourage people to make their own climate playlists. I know they already do. I know you already do out there. But really expanding your horizons into what constitutes music about and for climate change, and climate change emotional expression.

Pihkala: Yeah. And please do share with us some of your views either about songs that are very meaningful for you or even if you do construct playlists you'll find our contact info on the podcast website. So we'd love to hear from you. 

Doherty: Indeed. Climatechangeandhappiness.com. Take care of yourselves folks. 

Pihkala: Take care everyone. 

image credit | Önder Örtel

In this new episode, Thomas and Panu look back to a discussion they had in October 2021 about coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and how this compares with coping with climate change. As you listen, reflect on your own experiences of COVID-19 pandemic in the midst of the larger climate crisis. Back in 2021, it was clear these overlapping problems had pushed us to extend our capacity to be with our feelings amidst extreme hardship and challenge — now Panu and Thomas have been touched by COVID personally. In hindsight, Panu’s COVID and climate research and Thomas’s coping strategies ring true. Their wide-ranging 2021 dialog touched on wise use of media and avoiding “cyberchondria,” calibrating our anxiety alarm systems, restoring ourselves in the face of “macro worries,” and the importance of gratitude and embodying “love in action.” A key take away, then as now: Some suppression of emotions is quite useful and healthy in the midst of a crisis. The challenge is to be conscious of this process, and to come back to our emotional expression when we have the opportunity —for this is where we learn and grow.

• Could corona-anxiety lead to positive climate action? — an interview of Panu about coronavirus anxiety, eco-anxiety, and education (2020)

• Panu’s 2020 lecture video in English about “coronavirus anxiety” and climate anxiety 

• From Thomas’ 2020 Blog: Coping with COVID-19: Where Your Feelings Go, Your Thoughts Will Follow

• On the Role of Emotional Suppression

• Forthcoming books with introductions by Panu:

  • Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope: Experiencing the Twin Disasters of Covid-19 and Climate Change (Springer, September 2022)

  • Eco-Anxiety and Pandemic Distress: Psychological Perspectives on Resilience and Interconnectedness (Oxford, November 2022)

• A  recent study of coping with climate change and COVID-19: “Investigating similarities and differences in individual reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis”, Geiger et al. 2021, 

• A recent opinion from David Wallace Wells on US pandemic spending: “What if We Had Spent the Money on Climate?”

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity. 

[music: “CC&H theme music”]  

Introduction voice:  Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.

2022 Prologue 

Thomas Doherty: Well, hi folks. This is Thomas. And I am sitting here speaking with Panu. It’s June 2022. And Panu and I have been listening to an episode that we recorded in October of 2021 on COVID. The COVID-19 pandemic — and our thoughts about it as it was developing at that time. Since then, many things have happened in the world with the pandemic. As we all know! And with other areas that we’ve been talking about, like climate change. Panu and his family have actually had COVID in that intervening time. My family and I also had COVID just actually a few weeks ago. Finally caught up with us here in Portland, Oregon. And I’m healthy but I’m still feeling a little bit of the after effects. 

So we thought we would revisit this episode now, in hindsight. And see how it feels to listen to it. And you all will shortly be able to listen to the episode yourself. But Panu, what was it like to listen back to what we were thinking about in October of 2021?

Panu Pihkala: Yes. Hello, all listeners. So much is going on in these times that it actually felt quite long ago. Even though it’s last October. And we recorded many episodes during that Autumn. And then because of our two week scheduling of episodes, we are only now getting at some of the last ones we did. And on one hand we also wanted to wait and see where this Covid-19 pandemic was going. And then of course we ended up having it ourselves as Thomas mentioned. My family had it the second time. And now I also personally got it. I was four days completely out of business. But because of vaccinations, nothing too serious. But it took quite a long time to recover.

And in Finland right at the time that the prevalent wave of Covid-19 had started to go down, then came the war in Ukraine. So that timing was very bad in that sense, also. That people were struck by another global stressor or macro-worry. Which came very close. So when I was listening to the episode where we discuss many emotional disturbances rising from global stressors. Of course the war in Ukraine this spring came very clearly into my mind. And that reminded me forcefully of the overlapping crises that we are living through. So it was very interesting to return to this episode from 9 months ago. 

Doherty: Yeah. I agree. It felt like a long time ago. And I think listeners probably have the same sense. So many things have happened. And the pandemic is still ongoing in some ways. In a more chronic way. So I think this is a challenge. I think it’s a challenge. [Another] colleague that I listened to the episode remarked that he had a hard time separating climate change and COVID because the two issues seem to be so similar. Not necessarily causally. Well, he actually believed they are causally related because deforestation drives partly climate change. And deforestation drove partly COVID in the sense of really these new viruses [are] coming out of, you know, places like these wet markets that are mixing different species and animals. And viruses that would have lived deep in the forest or the woods are now being exposed to humans in this cross pollinating. 

So, he saw a lot of overlap between both the basic system of our planet and also the responses of people to the problem. The denial. The science — denigrating science. The reactionary nature. The individualist responses where people didn't want to get vaccinated and all this other stuff. So, as we talked about in the episode I think, COVID is sort of a climate change-like phenomenon that was just accelerated. We saw a lot of these different factors. So it is really a learning. It’s a hard learning experience. It’s not necessarily a positive learning experience about the world. Because it exposed so much — so many problems.

Pihkala: Yeah. Totally agree with you on that. And the terrible intersectional injustices, also. Both globally and regionally. And in the episode we quite a lot discuss the dynamics of eco-anxiety or climate anxiety as compared with Coronavirus anxiety. Or whatever we want to call it. And this came to my mind when listening to [your] colleagues' thoughts about the episode. And I mentioned that I wrote introductions to two books which discuss the COVID-19 crisis and the climate crisis. And now they are finally also starting to be published. That sometimes frustrating slowness of academic publishing. But now in late August and in November these two books should be out. And we’ll share info about that on our podcast website. 

One thing which is different is that because at least a strong wave of COVID-19 has now passed there’s a lot of people, including myself I have to say, who would just like to forget about COVID-19. At least for a long while. And this psychological dynamic, which on the one hand is pretty universal. There were some people writing about this at the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. But now it’s live. This sort of very human desire to, you know, let’s do something else for a while.

Doherty: Yeah. Which is human. And so we want to honor that. When we get through a crisis we want to put it aside. We want to - we get fatigued. And we want to set it aside. And so I think we want things to disappear. So the focus with Covid was really people were over immersed. We talked in the episode this idea of cyberchondria. Where people are doing a lot of online research about medical and health issues. And so there was such a strong anxiety reaction from many people with COVID. Particularly in the early stages of the pandemic when it was so mortally dangerous. Now there’s a hope to set aside and put it away. So it is really a developmental process. Because it isn’t going away. It’s going to be a chronic thing in our societies. 

But in our story, we did come back to the basic coping of being aware of our news intake. Being in our home place. Finding the news in our own community, around our family and things like that. And also just recognizing all the hard work that we all have done with COVID. All the precautions. All the thinking. All the care, you know, for others. You know, we're surviving. Many of us are surviving. And we’re working hard. And, again, all the healthcare workers that have been working for years now in the COVID area. All the researchers. So, it’s so easy just to focus on the downside and not give ourselves, you know, the support and the compliment and the gratitude and the gratefulness of all the people. Even today that are still working. And I have many clients that are medical professionals. You know, that are still working and still in the emergency room. Still dealing with people. Even trying to find some compassion for folks that really couldn't get with the program in the sense of trying to support a societal-wide science-based empirical approach to dealing with this pandemic. So, we do need to sort of recharge our batteries. And have gratitude. And be able to focus on what’s positive in our lives. 

Pihkala: Yeah. Totally agree with that. And it would be good if we would have resources and motivation and energy to organize also some festivals of gratitude for all the work that various people have done in this regard. And it would be great to have a sort of people’s fest around, you know, surviving even though there was lots of trouble. And there may be waves again and so on. But that’s very human. The need for gratitude and remembering goodness. And this is something that we end up discussing at the latest part of the episode that you will soon hear.

Doherty: Yeah. So, relistening to this episode is kind of a ritual. It’s a way to go back in time and to think about things. And, so, I invite the listeners to really use it as a reflective exercise for yourself to think about how your life has changed. And where you are now. And, you know, honor some of your losses. I would say here in Portland soon — I was approached by the Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Portland. And the disaster response team here in the city is having what they call “Heat Week.” And they’re having some events to commemorate the Heat Dome [deadly heat disaster] that happened one year ago. The major heat wave. And I’m going to be speaking on a panel around coping. 

But, I really think it’s such a great idea for them to have this memorial to this heat event. Partly for the first responders to really recognize all the work that they did. And also to keep the public aware that these things happen. It’s an exercise. It’s a ritual that I rarely see coming from a government. I know [in] our last episode we talked about the [eco-anxiety] work in Finland. Which is really, you know, proactive. But, so yes. There is something about cycling back and having these rituals to think about our lives and think about what we’ve learned. And that we’re still here. And we’re still going forward. So I invite people to listen and let us know what you think about us bringing back older episodes. This is climatechangeandhappiness.com. And thank you very much. Enjoy the episode. And we’ll keep bringing them to you.  

October 2021 Episode

Doherty: Hello, I'm Thomas Doherty. 

Pihkala: And I'm Panu Pihkala. 

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. The show for people around the globe who are thinking deeply about the personal side of climate change, particularly their emotions and their feelings about this. And we are speaking my morning and Panu's evening here on October 1, 2021. And Panu, I know, I'd like to get at some of the talks and things that you were doing this past week, we've got a lot of interesting things on our plates. 

But maybe I'll just jump in to some of the things you're up to. You've done some talks, but I know you've been writing about Coronavirus and eco-anxiety and getting into the emotions about these two issues and how they're similar and different. I know I have to be dragged into talking about [Coronavirus] just because my first emotions are reluctance and frustration and fatigue. But that's the way it goes with these emotions about these issues. It's only after I get into it that I start getting more interested and inspired and curious and grateful and all this sort of stuff. 

But tell me Panu what, you know. We'll just jump in, what's one of the pieces of this [Coronavirus] and eco- anxiety work you've been up to?

Pihkala: Yeah, I think many people might react to climate emotions or eco-emotions, the way that you just described, you know, that sense of reluctance. You know, it's so difficult the whole business of the climate crisis. That, do I really have to think about it or think about the feelings related to that? Probably that's not the major issue for our listeners, because you have sort of chosen to listen to this, but. 

Doherty: Yeah, you've joined us welcome. Yeah.

Pihkala: Yeah. Warmly welcome. We're very glad that you are there. But yeah, I've been doing introductions to two books, which deal with eco-anxiety, and so-called “Coronavirus Anxiety.” Now, this latter one also has many names. Even the same applies, of course, to eco-anxiety, also. There's COVID-19 Fear. And there's COVID Stress Syndrome, a framework developed by some other researchers. But all of these refer to the challenging emotions related to COVID-19. And I know that both I and Thomas have had our share of this and many people more, each one in her own way. 

What I'm doing in these introductions, [which are] sort of academic short articles, is that I'm exploring similarities, and then some differences. And when the COVID-19 pandemic started, I think a very sort of gut reaction of a lot of people was to try to apply what they know, and what they can do, to somehow encounter the new situation. And then there's me as an eco-anxiety researcher, trying to apply that in some constructive way to the situation. And that's one of the beginnings of this comparison. I sort of noticed there's [a] different timespan, of course, in relation to the COVID-19 threat, but then there's interesting similarities in the reactions. They are just more condensed in time. You know, when there's a growing sense of threat, but not certainty yet, people are like, hmm, there's something happening in China. And yeah, let's hope that it doesn't spread here. And some others are, you know, taking these signals more seriously, and then others try to ignore them. You know, Thomas, this sort of reminds me of many reactions to ecological crisis and climate crisis when it wasn't so widely known.

Doherty: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, one thing I found, I was able to read Panu's chapter on this. And I really appreciated you comparing some of the  timelines of, of, you know, how people cope with COVID and nations cope with COVID and how we have, you know, coped with climate change. And again, that, you know, we've been dealing with people in power have known about climate issues for, you know, since you and I have been alive. You know, and longer still really since the 1950s-60s. You know, people were clued into this, you know, so-called experts, you know. Expert advisors to leaders were. But yeah, you know, again, I think, keeping it real in terms of our own experience, you know. Yes, there's so much for me bound up in COVID. And, you know, it was sort of a, I think there's a lot of suppression of emotions that happen during a disaster, right. So we have to recognize that during an emergency or disaster, we have to take action, and so we just suppress some emotions. 

And, you know, I think some vocabulary is helpful here. You know, there's a difference between suppression and repression. You know, suppression is when I know, I'm feeling something, but I have to compartmentalize it in service of taking action. And so, you know, first responders have to suppress, you know, their fear, disgust, or various feelings they have, as they're going into a disaster zone and helping people. And, you know, repression is when we forget that we're suppressing, or we don't ever acknowledge in the first place, you know. And so I think, for me, there's just a lot of suppressed emotions, you know, fear about all the different things. You know, unpacking that unpacking the fear of while our work changes and fear for our families and this disruption to our lives. 

And, you know, my father died, late February of 2020, just on the cusp of the major COVID, you know, shutdowns here in the US. And it was actually for a while, unclear whether he had died of COVID. But we don't believe that he did. But, you know, we had to cancel his funeral and, you know, cancel the memorial that we planned for him. And, you know, so, you know, everyone has, or many people have really these personal stories. So it's easy to speculate, you know, globally that I think, you know, that our listeners are all having personal things, you know. And that's, I think, where that natural kind of reluctance and suppression is. So, how do you think about working with that? You know, how do we work with that? Or how do I move in that and move through that?

Pihkala: Yeah, that's a very good question. And there's research emerging, also about bereavement related to COVID-19, and how grief practices have been disrupted by lockdown measures and so on. And that's another interesting branch of research. And, of course, theories of grief and sadness are so much related to climate emotions. But I do agree, Thomas, that there's been lots of suppression, and many times it has been needed. And then there's the challenge that when, finally, things start to open up, and there's great feelings of relief. For example, just this week in Finland, there's been great joy because many of the lockdown measures have been made easier now the situation has got better. So, but that doesn't remove all the need to face some of the emotional toll that has been gathered. 

Of course, one might also speak about accumulation of stress. And that's something that I very personally felt after the first COVID-19 springtime. I did totally fine for two or three months, but after that, I realized that hey, there's a lot of stress gathering. Even though nobody in the near family was ill, there was some concern about some people very, very near me, and that, of course, caused stress based on compassion and so on. But, for example, in summer 2020, I had to use much more embodied coping methods or practices than I usually have to do. And this is linked with a very interesting theme related to what we are talking about with is the media stuff. We have touched upon this several times in our conversations, but that became very evident in relation to COVID-19. The need to limit one's media exposure because one can sort of feel the stress levels rising when reading about COVID-19 information, not to mention imagery.

Doherty: Yeah, yeah. And the media piece is really this is a good one because I've talked to a few people lately. Some of the people I'm working with and, you know, two people said almost the same thing about well, when I surface the idea of taking a break from the media and pulling back as both of these people are really I think having issues with excessive compulsive media intake which is contributing to all their different challenges. You know, anxieties and complications and fatigues. But, you know, they said, I don't want to bury my head in the sand, you know, I don't want to not know. And so that's something that we have to work at. 

And, you know, at the early stages of COVID, it was really fascinating and really interesting. And it was curious to see, you know, and we did want to track things. I think there's a healthy piece there. But, you know, very quickly, it can go over much. Even the most healthy thing if we overdo it. Like, it's sort of like, exercise, you know, an exercise related injury. Right? I could run an exercise, but if I overtrain I'll break my body down. And so I think people will “over media-ize” and not be balanced out. And so I think that's the danger. A term you shared, you know, recently with me is cyberchondria. Right, was it cyberchondria?

Pihkala: Yeah. Yeah. That's the one. 

Doherty: You know, so we like words here. You know, at the Climate Change and Happiness Podcast. We like our words. And, you know, cyberchondria is - how would you define cyberchondria?

Pihkala: Yeah, that's not an official diagnosis, but it's been borne out of real perceptions during the 2000s and 2010s, that there's often the tendency to seek health information online. And, you know, you get some vague aching somewhere, and then you start Googling. And after two minutes, you start to become convinced that this is cancer or something. Actually, for example, some Finnish health authorities have even issued campaigns, where they say that please don't google your symptoms. Come to our websites, which are reliable. So the sort of institutional work being done to counter the dangers of cyberchondria. Having so much concern about one's health. And once again, it's very natural, of course, to be concerned about one's health, but then there's the issue of how we seek information related to it.

Doherty: Yeah, yeah. So there's a sweet spot there. We do, you know, again, I think, using the disaster, you know, framing, you know, during the disaster, you know, we do need to seek out information. We need some intelligence about what's going on in the world. And so we are going to be plugged in. We want to be plugged into the media. But, again, trying to know the difference between what's new information and what's simply, you know, recycling of content, and all the marketing and all the other stuff that goes on within the media, which is not our friend, which is just designed to grab our attention and to keep us, you know, keep us locked into the whatever channel. And so knowing when to stop. 

And, you know, as I tell people, you know, they won't be.  Just because they take a break from electronic media, doesn't mean their head is in the sand. That's way too black and white. It's not accurate at all. In fact, the experiment that I've found personally true and, you might, listeners might try this. When you unplug from the news, you do not feel uninformed. In fact, in some ways you feel more informed about the world and you're able to think about things a little more deeply. And I think it allows some of the information to settle. Certainly we hear about things, if something's important, we'll hear about it. So actually, I feel like, you know, we become more informed about our lives when we break from the news. And less distracted. And less frenetic. 

And then, you know, reminding people that we are the news. You know, we are the news. We make our own news. Our life is the news, you know, and that's where we need to be. Not as a consumer of other people's, you know, information. So, I do encourage people to, you know, just to play around with that idea. But yeah, so hypochondria. Cyberchondria. Doomscrolling. Right? You know, so excessive scrolling through stories. Yes, and you know, there was a spectacle with COVID. Of course, there's a lot of tragedy here with just the. As we talked about in our pre conversation, you know. And you get at it coming back to that timeline. You know, that at the beginning there is investigation, there's healthy, I believe you would say healthy anxiety. 

Pihkala: Yeah.

Doherty: There's a very useful and healthy anxiety at the very beginning of these things.

Pihkala: Yeah. Some people notice that there's a threat which includes uncertainty. And that starts people thinking, trying to find more information so that they could better evaluate the threat and shape their responses to it. And this brings out the practical anxiety element. Which happens both in relation to ecological issues, the climate crisis, and it happened in relation to COVID-19. And, for example, the end of February 2020. In Europe, that was an interesting time, because some people started restricting their movements already. And some people, for example, still went to holidays in Northern Italy even though there was information leaking, that, you know, there's quite a number of cases there, and so on. So, that was a time when more and more people should have listened to anxiety, actually. But then, when the threat became very clear, of course, there were also panic reactions, lots of fear, and also this suppression of alarm state so that people could function better. So there's a whole range of things happening. And sometimes, in the media, people are talking about climate anxiety or eco-anxiety in an overly simplistic manner. It can include all kinds of reactions. But of course, I want to emphasize this practical anxiety dimension. And it's more like the climate skeptics who then talk of climate panic, for example, trying to frame this as sort of unneeded rushy, panicky activity, which isn't really not the case. 

What I found personally helpful was when I was reading more about our systems, both conscious and unconscious. And I realized that reading this COVID-19 information, even though I sort of prepared myself for that, and tried to remember, for example, bodily practices, like, you know, keep breathing, steady, and so on. Still, it affects you sort of unconsciously. It goes to our alarm systems, and it may trigger some things related to death anxiety, or health anxiety, and so on. But I think that's one further reason for this very healthy emphasis that's here, you Thomas putting forward that there's a need to restrict [our media intake]. Even though we prepare ourselves, there's elements which reach our alarm system.

Doherty: Yeah. Yeah. So how do, you know, how to, on a daily basis, do we calibrate our alarm system? So we, you know, we need to rest it. That's, you know, that's another way to think about this with the news. You know, we need to we, you know, we need to rest our ability, you know, to take in the news, so we can kind of start to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of what's actually useful information. 

You know, we were talking about Thoreau in one of our last conversations. Henry David Thoreau writing in the 1840s, you know, and he was saying, you know, the news, you know, I'm more concerned about what's never old, you know, not what's news. But he was already dealing with just this content. So yes, one of the first steps with eco-anxiety work, I think, is realizing that, you know, is identifying what healthy anxiety is, and really claiming that because we're never going to not feel anxious about the world. It's part of our wiring. And it's very healthy. But very quickly when we get into systems and governments and things. We get into public relations and propaganda, and often, you know, leaders don't want to. You know, their advisors will bring information to them and, you know, it's not politically expedient, you know. And so then there's the shaping and the spinning of stories and things like that. And so I think we've seen that with, you know, in the US and China, in particular during COVID. So, we're rolling with that, and we can't control all of that. So that's something that's somewhat out of our control. So we have to sort of learn to roll with that. And then is, there's grief about that. 

I was thinking of David Kessler's work on grief. And, you know, he talks about a river like a flowing river and certain griefs are more simple or more complicated. You know, our complicated grief is like a bunch of logs and sticks that are blocking up the river. So it's really hard to feel grief for various reasons. And I think, you know, for COVID, you know, there's different complications there for people, you know, in terms of did it affect them personally? And is it about their political beliefs or family? And things like that. So just in general, their griefs are more or less complicated, which is something to be aware of.

Pihkala: Yeah, and guilt also can be hugely complicated and there can be so many different kinds of guilt one can feel in relation to COVID-19 for example. That “should I have been more careful” type of thing and all sorts of [guilty feelings] wrenching into existence. So, feeling self-guilt and that, of course, [mutatis mutandis,  changing the things that needed to change] applies also to eco-anxiety and climate anxiety. So there's numerous things that one can feel guilt or even shame about. And some of them can lead to positive behavior changes. But, of course, we have to face the issue that there's no point in feeling totally overburdened by guilt and shame for a long time. That's not gonna help anyone. Not the planet, or you or those living close to you.

Doherty: Yeah. And I think, you know, in terms of how we can cope, you know, as the listeners, as you're listening. You know, I think if you can kind of get in your body a little bit. You know, kind of feel like take a breath and be in your body. And, you know, breathe into your belly or breathe into your heart, you know, there's scales that we exist in, in the world. So we have our personal family scale, and then our community scale, and our, you know, the world scale. And because of communication technology, we are able to, you know, kind of toggle between this real personal level scale and these world scales. In terms of problems. In terms of issues. In terms of our information. What we know. And it can be really jarring. And so, you know, learning to just know where are you in terms of the scales? You know, what scale are you working on here? I mean, I think and being able to know that is a really helpful skill. Otherwise, people are really pulled in a lot of directions. And again, if we don't have that personal level, grounding, we have no base to take on these larger pieces. 

And so I know, you know, for me, I talked about my father's death. And that's where I will first go around COVID, because that was, you know, one of the ways that it personally affected me and my family. And, you know, of course we think about the politics and all this other stuff. And you, Panu, do you want to talk about how COVID affected you and your family as well?

Pihkala: Yeah. Very recently, of course, we had to stay home because we actually got it now after one and a half years of managing to miss it. But luckily, the symptoms were very mild, and us adults had two vaccinations. And we practiced caution. So, for example, in this period, when we had it, but didn't know it, we didn't pass it on to anyone because we were using masks and so on. So that was a recent phase. But, of course, it's been a long time. One and half years. 

And this actually links to an event that I was speaking at this morning in Finland, which was about children and the future, organized by an organization called MLL - Mannerheimin Lastensuojeluliitto for those of you who know Finnish. It's an old and respectable organization taking care of children's welfare. And there was, of course, talk about how the COVID-19 time had affected children. And of the very different conditions that children were facing. You know, some didn't receive care, or actually were victims of home violence, for example. But then others, they had more time with their parents than they have had for years. So it's an ambiguous mix. So in a sort of paradoxical vein, sometimes it also brought happiness. And perhaps this links with the theme of our podcast also. That there may be surprising dimensions of happiness happening amidst this very complex and problematic time. 

Doherty: Yeah. That's great. Bringing us back to our mission here. You know, Climate Change and Happiness. What does it mean to be happy during these times? When we have these, you know, what they call macro worries. You know, with these world level worries, these eco-anxieties. How do we then, you know, carve out time for trying to figure out what it means to be happy? Or what might it be to be happy during these times and with our family? So again, that's another reason to sort of pull ourselves away from the media and look at ourselves. Look at our lives. You know, again, emotionally as I said earlier, with COVID, you know, I do know how to regulate my emotions, and I work on this and so I, I am able to, you know, surf this stuff. So it's sort of like yes, dread and frustration and a sense of tragedy and just disgust at how COVID, you know, was handled. And a lot of the, you know, the political dysfunction and corruption here in the United States. And, you know, but then I I flipped over to gratitude. And, you know, impressed. I'm so impressed with all the people that have worked so hard. I mean, I know people. My friends, and you know, my clients are medical people, medical doctors and nurses. And just the incredible, spectacular heroic work of people all around the world, you know, in terms of COVID and helping other people. And even the scientific, you know, the speed of the scientific, you know, work and the rolling out of vaccines. It's absolutely incredible. 

I mean, again, it's not all perfect, and I don't want to be, you know, just a booster, or Pollyanna about this. But there are some really, truly positive emotions here. People coming together. People being creative. People trying to adapt. It's amazing how people have been able to adapt. Entertainers and various people trying to reach out, you know. So there's a whole realm of emotions. And then I think there is just that fatigue. Because we're not through it yet. It's still unclear. So I think that fatigue piece comes up for people, so.

Pihkala: Yeah, [the] chronic stressor element is present both in relation to the climate crisis and still COVID-19. Very much resonate with what you said there, Thomas. And the amount of compassion and empathy, one might even speak of, you know, love in action. There's been lots of selfishness happening. And of course, we all know that that's not the whole whole picture. And it's very tragic, for example, among the nations, how the vaccines haven't been spread equally, and so on. But still on the local level, there's been lots of, you know, things that lift up one's belief about the good sides of human nature, also.

Doherty: Yeah, I love that idea of love in action. That's a great kind of moving toward the end of our conversation today. But that's a great place to be right now in this conversation. Love in action. Think of all the things that would fit under that heading over the last number of years. You know, all the parents that have been home with their children. And, you know, all the health care providers. And, you know, yes, it brought out, you know, like, a lot of things is the best in the worst of times. You know, Dickens' language, you know. 

But COVID is, you know, it's legitimate to say that, you know, the COVID-19 crisis has brought out much good in people. And much love in action. And we need to, and we need to honor that. It's not fair, if we don't talk about that. So I think, you know, listeners can maybe take a breath. And, you know, let go a little bit of the COVID stuff that we've been coping with. And just, you know, set that burden down, as it is. We have moved through it. And, you know, really spend some time, you know, sitting with that idea of love in action and how we've all embodied that in our own ways. I think that's really, that's a neat way to think about, you know, our feelings. And, you know, that we can kind of have multiple feelings, obviously. And we can shine our light on one feeling or another. The story is not over yet. And we can certainly talk about much more with this. I mean, I feel pretty good that we've been able to even step into this topic. But love and action, I really like that. And, tell me, as we conclude here, what else you have going on here in terms of your talks and activities.

Pihkala: Hmm, yeah. I'm still sort of floating with this emotional landscape of love in action. So thanks for spending time here. I really think that that's the basis also for grief, and even for guilt, you know. Those arise because we care. And then one might go into more metaphysical speculations about what's the ultimate caring thing and so on. But let's not venture there now, this week.

There's been an interesting webinar between Finland and Sweden. I know that from the point of view of most of the world, it might seem that it's like two districts of the same city, but we have a long history in this corner of Europe with the different countries. But we were talking about ecological emotions, both in Sweden and Finland and how they are talked about. There's differences in language, for example. So that was a very interesting thing happening on Wednesday. And also opportunities to meet many people who are working with the subject, so that was uplifting. But how's it been for you, Thomas, this week?

Doherty: A lot going on, Panu. I have my group for mental health professionals. A climate conscious group starting next week. So I'm preparing for that. I have a proof of this chapter on climate change in clinical psychology that I was working on. I'm reviewing a paper on support groups around climate change for students. For college students. And that's actually a positive, interesting paper. It's a mixed bag. I'm also working with people and clients that are struggling with, you know, this amassed fatigue of COVID and climate and things like that. 

But yeah, I am being inspired by the things that I'm seeing and finding. And so it's, again, it's toggling between, you know, my home territory and having the news that's just in my day and in my family and in my neighborhood and on my street. And then these larger pieces. And I'm looking forward to getting into it with a group of mental health professionals and talking about this sort of stuff. So that's going to be a nice series coming up. So yeah, yeah. So let's keep up our good work. You keep up your good work. I will. And then our listeners, you all keep up all your good work and love in action. You know, those are some lenses to put on and look at the world through today. And this is Climate Change and Happiness. Climatechangeandhappiness.com. Send us thoughts and messages and ideas and we'll keep talking about this.

Pihkala: Yes. We end with these Beatles-like tones. Thanks everyone for listening. Looking forward to talking more with you, Thomas. 

Doherty: Have a great evening, Panu. Bye bye.