Climate Change and Happiness

image credit | Robin Canfield

Season 4, Episode 23: On Transformational Resilience with Bob Doppelt

Thomas and Panu met with long-time environmental and mental health advocate Bob Doppelt. Bob talked about his personal story beginning with landscape and river system conservation and moving into sustainability and leadership education. Bob also spoke of his recent activities working with the International Transformational Resilience Coalition on ways that communities can connect and adapt in the face of climate disruptions. Bob's latest work focuses on the idea of “community is medicine.” As happens when like-minded people come together, Thomas and Bob found that they had a number of mutual connections in the Oregon white water rafting community. Join us for an inspiring conversation.

Links

• Bob Doppelt

• Transformational Resilience (book)

• The International Transformational Resilience Coalition

• David Pollack: What is Transformational Resilience and how does it apply to the mental health and public health responses to the impacts of climate change?

• Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness (CC&H), 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.

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. This is our podcast, a show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about climate change and other environmental issues. And you know what they say when you pick on one thing in the universe, it's hitched to everything else. So, climate environmental issues include your family, politics, economics, your life, your spirituality. So, all this stuff. And we really enjoy having conversations with people around the world. And I'm really honored to have a guest today. A person that I've actually never met but we have a lot of shared contacts in the past as often happens. So, I'd like you to meet our guest.

Doppelt: Hello, I’m Bob Doppelt. I coordinate the International Transformational Resilience Coalition. I'm happy to be here today.

Doherty: Yeah, and we were just chatting before we started. Now, I used to work as a river guide and an outdoor guide in Oregon. And I knew Bob had been a river guide too and it turns out we know some of the same people and some of my mentors he had worked with. It's a small world in sustainability and climate sometimes, and we cross paths. So that's already a nice connection we're having. And I'm really interested in actually hearing about Bob's current work and all the things he's doing. Panu, do you want to get us started?

Pihkala: Warmly welcome, Bob, also on my behalf. Pleasure to meet you. We have been presenting in some of the same lecture series, but we haven't actually talked with each other, so this is a pleasure. I started working on eco-anxiety and eco-emotions around 2008 or 2009, and then in a more concentrated manner after 2015. And during that period, I was very happy when I found your book from 2016 called Transformational Resilience. Terms such as eco-anxiety existed. They were not as popular as they were later on, but I was really surprised how wide-ranging that book was already, including both individual methods for calming down your nervous system when there's too much stress and lots of things around community and social relations and resources. So, I was very grateful for that, and it's actually had some influence in Finland also, but before going into details, and listeners, we will open up the concept of transformational resilience, it would be very nice to hear something about your personal journey. How did you become so invested in these matters related to environmental issues and human psychology and community resilience?

Doppelt: Well, thank you both and nice to meet you both. Even though it's not in person yet. But I've sort of, like many of us in life, go in a fishtail kind of experience through life. I've been a river guide all my life, including in high school, and had always had a strong connection to the outdoors. But in doing that, one of the things I did when I was very young, I was hired at age 21, after college, to run an outdoor treatment program for 30 kids. Here are 30 kids, now take them around the country and do rock climbing, backpacking, river running, and don't kill anybody. That was sort of the message I got from the director, but we did it, and it went well. So, it was early on that I had an experience of having to work with people who were in stressful situations and in the outdoors. And it was a very interesting learning experience.

So, I ended up going to grad school both in counseling psychology and in environmental science. My first actual professional experience, I worked as a counselor with troubled youth and their families. And after a number of years there, I realized that I didn't have enough understanding of what many of these kids were going through to really help them. I was trained in Adlerian counseling and Dreikurs family therapy and this didn't help many of the kids that I was dealing with, and we can get into that later. I got burned out because of that, so I went back into the environmental field. Then ended up, after many years, running the Climate Leadership Initiative at the University of Oregon, which was one of the very first social science based ethical assistance research programs in the US. So, we ran around helping organizations, state governments, country governments and others develop their first climate action plans. We went to southeast Florida and helped organize the Southeast Florida Climate Resiliency Compact which brought together the largest metro area in Florida, Miami-Dade and Broward counties to prepare for sea level rise, storm surges, and other impacts. Then, Superstorm Sandy came along which you might remember. I guess 12 years ago. We saw mental health impacts in the northeast of the US such as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, but it skirted along the coast of Florida, and we saw the same impacts here. The other people in the climate field didn’t see that or if they did, they didn’t care much because it wasn’t their background. But because of my background in mental health, I saw those impacts and I knew they were going to get way worse because the climate emergency was going to get way worse. That led me to form the ITRC, the International Transformation of Resilience Coalition, to try to combine these two fields now 11 years ago.

Doherty: Yeah, this is great. Either for young people or for people that are new in some sort of climate or sustainability, it's important to realize this is not new at all. People have been in some form of environmental sustainability for 50 years, in the modern sense of the term and certainly climate. Now someone who grew up in Oregon, I talk in the book I'm working on about the emergence of the modern environmental movement. Much of it took place on the West Coast and in places like Oregon and Eugene. So, this idea of having a climate resilience plan isn’t new. It was like 30 years ago that people were talking about this. It wasn't just yesterday. So, it's really great to talk with you. It gives a sense of the breadth and distance and depth of this kind of program. A lot of people were surprised by Sandy, but you were already involved and could see it coming. All these experiences like Sandy, Lahaina, the LA fires, and Ashley. These are all tipping point wakeup call experiences. I think Sandy's unique, and we could talk maybe more about that because it mobilized the New York intelligentsia, the New York therapists. The people that wouldn't necessarily be the Oregonian river guide types. It brought them into the mix of this so that's really a sad way to do it, but it is what's been happening. It's probably what's the case. Each disaster kind of folding in a new subculture of people into this work. Would you say that's a fair statement?

Doppelt: Yeah, I think as is often the case with humans is that it's only a crisis that gets us to think differently, change our minds, etc. And this issue is so overwhelming to most people, they can't get their heads around it. So, we deal with the next crisis by trying to respond to it, and then we move on. We don't think about what's actually happening over the long term and what's needed because we're going to have more and more disasters. And just as importantly with the climate crisis, we call it the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis, because it's way more than an atmospheric crisis. We're degrading ecological systems and we're exterminating biodiversity worldwide that feeds back to increased temperatures and dysregulates the atmospheric climate system even more, which of course then feeds back and has more ecological and biological impact. So, it’s a real interactive process. Even the most destructive impacts go far beyond disasters, these extreme weather events. And that's what people haven't quite wrapped their heads around. It’s activating cascading disruptions to the ecological, social, and economic systems people rely on for food, water, shelter, jobs, health, income. And we often can't connect it with the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis. But even now, rising food prices in the US, that people are so mad about, are not all caused by, but a significant part is droughts that are impacting food, reducing the ability of farmers to produce food, etc. So, it's creating all sorts of stresses. And then on top of that, or connected to that, are these acute disasters that come in and harm and destroy people. And that is really what we really need to prepare for. That's what my organization is trying to help people prepare for and communities prepare for. Otherwise, we just sit around and try to react to the next disaster and help people through mental health first aid afterwards. And that's important, but that's not the solution at all.

Pihkala: Yeah, that's a real systemic approach to these issues. Could you share with the listeners what are some of the practical methods in that kind of work?

Doppelt: Yeah, good question. So as people think about it, when there is a disaster, what normally happens? People come together who don't know each other, might not even like each other, and they help each other out. They provide food and shelter or practical assistance. They go rescue somebody from a situation and they set up food shelters for people to come and get food when their home's ruined or something. That's called the community cohesion phase of a disaster or the honeymoon phase. So, we help people realize and think about if they’ve been assisted by that or participated in that in some way and if they could see that kind of mutual aid network becoming long-term and permanent. That's really what we're focused on. We are focused on helping communities and neighborhoods form what we call Transformational Resilience Coordinating Networks, TRNCs. They are these mutual aid networks. The difference is the mutual aid networks usually get established and then disappear a month, two months, whenever after disaster ends. People go back and put their own lives back together and they leave.

The climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis is going to get far worse, actually in rapid order, and it's going to continue for decades. We need to establish the social infrastructure in communities that can support that community cohesion phase over the long term. That's what the Transformation Resilience Coordinating Networks are and as part of that, they need to help people learn different kinds of resilience skills and engage in different kinds of resilience activities. I can dive into that in a second. But that's really what we're trying to do. And I'll just also say that we've been working on this for quite a while. We have TRCNs, they call themselves something different, in many parts of the U.S and Canada and other places. The UN High-Level Climate Champion Race to Resilience Initiative found out about our work over a year ago and invited us to become a partner. So, we're now working internationally on this through the UN Race to Resilience Initiative and finding that different countries, different nations, different communities struggle with different issues than we do in western communities and higher income areas.

Doherty: Yeah, this is great. It's like Paradise Built in Hell from Rebecca Solnit. In a crisis is opportunity in the sense that we can really build back better, and we can actually harness all the positive honeymoon phase human connections that come about in disasters because they do have this leveling effect temporarily. You didn't say it, but I think being proactive about this helps us to get ahead of disaster capitalism and some of the breakdowns. I don't know that you get into that directly, but I see you as standing in the way of that negative stuff happening.

Doppelt: Yeah, we do actually get into a bit. We don't label that. I will say that Rebecca's work didn't talk about what happens after the community cohesion phase. And that's really what's important. Then you go into what we call the disillusionment phase because people have to go back and put their own lives back together so that cohesion and that community support no longer exists. And that can last for months or years and that's the disillusionment phase. That's when most of the mental health and psychosocial problems emerge. That's why we need to establish this social infrastructure over the long term, because we don't want that disillusionment phase. We want that support to be there.

And what we also find is that one of the things driving much of this is the social isolation and loneliness that people feel in western and higher income nations that is very toxic today and is getting worse with social media and other kinds of things. This brings people together and creates the social connections, the social cohesion and social efficacy needed to address these common problems. And it has to happen, or it has to start in the communities. And what we find is when communities come together or neighborhoods come together to do this, it takes a while, and you normally wouldn't like each other or they have different political views, but they create the political power to push for change at a higher level. And that's really key. But we don't talk about that being the goal, initially. First, help each other out so that people will help you and you can help others. And when you help others out, you often find new meaning and purpose in your life, you feel good about what you do, you have meaning, and that's what helps prevent mental health problems or heal them when they emerge.

Pihkala: Yeah, that is impressive and so important. And at some point, in our conversation, I do want to go into this topic of meaning and purpose, which I also think is highly, highly essential. And listeners, you may be familiar with the resilience concept and some of the criticism against it. I think it's a valid concept, but some of the main criticism is that if only people return to a previous state of affairs, that will not be enough. And this transformational resilience that Bob is talking about by name goes beyond that. So, it points to growth in these processes. I hear that when you talk about these issues, but do you want to say something more about this transformation aspect?

Doppelt: Yeah, that's a very good point, thank you. When we first started the ITRC, now 11 years ago, we had a team of about 12 people who came together to try to form it. And we had about 30 to 40 emails flying back and forth between people trying to come up with the name. Because what we were really talking about is a post-traumatic growth, in used psychology terms, or adversity-based growth. We thought that was too wonky for the general public, so we called it transformational resilience. But, after many emails trying to come up with a nice name, what this really means is that what's happening with the climate emergency is that our way of life and how people live and what they do is being challenged. Our economic model is being challenged. We're seeing the push back on that now in the U.S.

In other words, what the climate emergency does to many people is it shatters their core views, their deeply held assumptions and beliefs about the way the world operates and their role in it. That's a classic definition of trauma. That's what trauma is about and that's only going to get worse as the climate emergency worsens and we'll have greater push back against it then. Oh no, it's not really happening or whatever. But what transformational resilience means to us and what we teach and what we help communities engage in is how to use adversities to not just bounce back to where you were. For many people, it wasn't a very good place in the first place. Why do you want to bounce back to that? And especially the way we live, our high consumption rates, our high fossil fuel rates, etc., are all not helpful to bounce back to. So how do we use the adversities to find new sources of meaning, purpose, and hope in life that actually increase our sense of well-being and the well-being of others well beyond what it was before. Because it wasn't all that healthy before for many people, and certainly not for the natural environment. So that's what we mean by transformation resilience. How do we use this experience that is just going to continue and grow worse to actually catalyze really fundamental individual, collective, economic and other kinds of changes.

Doherty: Yeah, this is all really great. And we're going to put some links in the show notes to the networks that Bob is talking about because I think people might want to get involved. And this is a global initiative that Bob's involved in. It's systemic and that's what's challenging about the terms because like I say in this project I'm working on, when you're thinking big, you're not thinking big enough, right? We always have to keep realizing there's another level and another level and not get too concrete. Systemically, if you help in one small area of your life or in someone's life, then it filters into other areas. And if we draw down carbon in one part of the atmosphere, it helps the whole atmosphere. So, underneath all this, I think there's a systemic insight that that is one of the foundational and juicy parts of this. Bob, how did you get involved in systems thinking? Because that seems to have animated all of your stuff going back. Do you have a story about that or how that came into your life?

Doppelt: That's an interesting question. I don't remember. It was many years ago. I think it was because I was in the environmental field, and you learn systems thinking even if it's not called that. Then I just started going to some workshops and found out how to describe it more graphically or specifically. But, let me just say one other thing in terms of terms. We work with different groups in many different continents, and you have to use different terms, different phrases that resonate and make sense to the culture and demographics of the age groups that you're working with. And we often find that we don't know what we're doing initially. And we have to share different phrases and ask people to share with us how they see these issues. That's how we learn the way that makes the most sense. You have to resonate with what is already there. Scientific facts and figures mean nothing to most people. It's their mental models. It's their assumptions of how the way the world works and how they work. That's what they see the world through. You have to try to understand that as much as possible.

Doherty: It reminds me of SustyVibes. We spoke with Jennifer Uchendu in Nigeria and their term of sustainable vibration, SustyVibes, which if they're not already familiar with your work, there'd be a good contact. That's helpful for all of us to realize. We have to be a cosmopolitan like you. We have to be able to speak different languages, go into different communities and kind of when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Pihkala: Yeah, exactly so and regardless of various terms and various styles of life, there is still the lived experience of being alive in this strange time of global warming and biodiversity loss and all the other things. And I strongly resonate with this task of trying to listen and understand and connect with other people's experiences and then try to find ways towards increased transformational resilience or transilience which is a word that some scholars suggested a couple of years ago. Adversarial growth or post-traumatic growth has also been one of my interests and I've done an analysis of the traditional categorization of that and then comparing that to people's experiences amidst environmental issues and environmental emotions. So, I've benefited from your work Bob on that project also, but I do want to talk about the very practical resilience skills which you mentioned. So, could you share some of those practical skills and methods that the coalition uses?

Doppelt: Yeah again, thank you for that question. The most important skill is really a process, and that is to build social connections across geographic lines, economic lines, racial lines in the community. And when you do that and we help different community groups learn how to do that, we also help encourage them to help people learn what we call presencing skills, which are self-regulation and co-regulation skills. Skills to calm your body, mind, and emotions and skills to help others do the same that you interact with, that's co-regulation. And once people have calmed their nervous system, we don't usually talk about it that much in those terms, then they practice what we call purposing skills. So presencing and purposing. And purposing is how do you find new meaning, purpose, and hope in these adversities. What can you do? And most of the time, that involves rising above your own interest and trying to help others and help the natural environment. But the starting point often, not always, when we're working with community groups is to build those social connections. So there's programs that do that by holding potlucks for neighbors and having people just get together and get to meet them. The San Francisco neighborhood empowers program, which now they defunded it, which was too bad, was very successful. They would shut off entire streets in urban San Francisco and bring tables out and put tables in the middle and have potlucks. People on high rises would come down and share that. And then after they did that a couple of times, then they'd form a resilience network, a coordinating network, a steering committee of neighbors that wanted to do it. And they'd develop a resilience plan for the community, and they'd share it with everybody. It was a very, very successful program. 

There's many other examples of ways in which communities and neighborhoods can build those social connections. And as doing that, then you add these presencing and purposing skills. If you have a meeting, say let's just take a brief, what we call a resilience pause, but each group can call it something different. Let's just take a moment to calm ourselves. And there's a wide variety of age and culturally appropriate presencing skills that you can use. Sometimes it's breath-based, sometimes it's feeling the sensations in your body, sometimes it's just telling jokes and laughing often. Lots of different ways. You connect the different skills together and you help people understand that you have to stay calm and learn how to find meaning in life given all these other adversities that are going on. That's what purposing is. And I can get into purposing skills too if you want to know about that.

Doherty: That's pretty practical, Panu. Did that answer your question?

Pihkala: Yeah, that's exactly the level of detail and practicality I was hoping for. And if you want to say a bit about the purposing skills, I think that would also be fascinating.

Doppelt: Yeah, listeners, just think about what gives their life purpose. What do they find meaning in? And many times, most often for most people, it is the connections they have with other people, the relationships. But sometimes it's art, or it's helping animals, or helping other people in the community. It's hard to know. And there's other things. Each person's different. For some people, it's spirituality or religious beliefs. We just ask people to think about what helps them find meaning and you ask people how you find that and how can you connect that source of meaning with what's going on now in this disaster. Or how can you find new sources of meaning. What we often point out and we mostly ask questions is do you find that you learned new skills, that you had more skills than you thought you had or strength that you thought you had when you did that kind of work. They say, I didn't realize I could speak up for myself or whatever. And that's what transformation resilience is really about. It's about helping people understand that they can use adversities as catalysts to learn, grow, and increase their sense of well-being, mostly by just becoming aware of skills and capacities they already have that they haven't been using and then applying that to what's going on in their community and their family life. 

Doherty: Yeah, this is great. Listeners, we had an episode recently with my friend Greg Hill, who's much like Bob in doing neat work for a while. We talked about eco-friends where we have these people that we know, and we follow, and they inspire us. So, I got a lot of flavor of this from hearing Bob because even though we haven't actually chatted about this, we tracked very similar thinking over the years. So, it really is validating for me personally to hear your approach because it's similar to how I think about things. I love the presencing and purposing language. That's a key. It's more important than we realize, the language that's flexible enough for people to grab on to. That's not super academic. I'm glad we're talking after I'm writing my book because then I would have to go add a bunch of stuff in. But I do list Bob's program in my resource list. The power of art, the power of spirituality, relationships. What do they say, don't have a meeting, have a party, don't have a meeting, have a potluck. It makes it much more universal and much more human no matter whether you're in Oregon or Africa or Finland.

Pihkala: Indeed so, and we'll put some links to previous podcast episodes. There's one where we discuss various types of meaning in life for example, which is closely related to what Bob was just talking about. We are reaching our usual half an hour length, but I'd like to ask you Bob if you want to share something about what kinds of presencing and proposing skills are important for you personally in this very troubled time? Is it still the river-oriented stuff that has been dear to you for so long? Would you like to share a couple of those that are personally very meaningful?

Doppelt: Yeah, we don't live in a city, we live out in the country because I need nature around us. My wife is the same way. My wife was a veterinary technician for 29 years. So, connection with animals is very much there. But we have a group of friends that we still go rafting with when my arm doesn't hurt me too bad. That's the problem with getting older, that stuff can hurt. But also, for many years, I've practiced meditation and mindfulness. I'm a mindfulness-based stress reduction instructor and I teach part-time at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California. So, I practice those. But most importantly is just finding ways to laugh. We've got a group of friends, we just had dinner again and about once a week we have dinner with a group of and we laugh. We become 12-year-olds and laugh at the silliest things even in the midst of what's going on with the U.S. now and the presidency and we find ways to laugh about it. And I keep doing this work. My wife keeps asking, when am I really going to retire. Well, this is what gives me purpose and meaning.

Let me say one other thing just so we can get it on. If you're interested in forming your own Transformation Resilience Coordinating Network in your neighborhood or community, you can go to our website and use an application to fill out and then we invite you to become part of a community of practice that meets every other week. And there's people from all over the world that join and sometimes we're teaching skills, sometimes we're just having conversations to problem solve with the different groups and communities. We also provide an ongoing educational program about this where they can just sit through a series for a five-week period. They don't have to attend all; they can just get the slides sent to them afterwards. So, there's lots of ways to get involved. You don’t even have to join us. Just think about how you form a mutual aid network in your neighborhood and community. Get your friends together, talk about it, and get a vision together. What are you trying to achieve, what would be different than this happening now, and see if you can get that established because this is what we’re going to need all over the world as the climate emergency worsens. So, I encourage everyone to try to find a way that they can get involved.

Doherty: Yeah, thanks for adding that call to action because that's perfect. We'll put that link on the website. If you're listening to this and this is inspiring to you, go check it out, Transformational Resilience. You could find it pretty easily. And again, it's nice that this is flexible. You can move it in the direction that's good for your community. Well, Bob, I just want to thank you. It's a long time coming to get you on the podcast. I'm so glad that we did. Now we can connect some more and maybe get on the river sometime in the future. We'll say goodbye, listeners. Panu, are you going to get some rest? What's happening at your end there?

Pihkala: Well, what's happening is that the sun has already set in Finland, so time to get some rest and perhaps laugh a bit before that. Thanks, Bob, for all the practical and systemic wisdom you've shared. It's been a great pleasure.

Doppelt: Thank you both for having me and good luck to both of you and all of your listeners.

Doherty: Alright, thanks everyone and everyone be well.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

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 | Alex Vasey

Season 4, Episode 22: Climate Therapy in Italy with Camilla Gamba and Lucia Tecuta

Thomas and Panu engaged with therapists and researchers Camilla Gamba and Lucia Tecuta, who shared their cosmopolitan journeys into climate psychology and eco-therapy. Lucia and Camilla described their bicultural backgrounds in Italy and the US and challenges and opportunities in translating concepts like environmental identity and stewardship into the rich Italian cultural and historic context. Join us for an inspiring discussion of activism and “il dolce far niente.”

Links

• Camilla Gamba

• Lucia Tecuta

  • Academic

• Climate Reality Project: How the Climate Crisis is Impacting Italy

• Club Alpina Italiano

• Via di Francesco Pilgrimage Route

• Mika Waltari (1956) The Etruscan

• See Season 4, Episode 21: Climate Psychology in Italy with Matteo Innocenti

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness (CC&H), 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.

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. This is our podcast, the show for people around the world who are thinking and feeling deeply about climate change and environmental issues and their relationship with nature and the earth and of course politics and life. And that's all fair game for our conversations. And we love to talk to people around the world because of course Panu and I are far apart. And today, we are very happy to have two special guests coming in from a country that I love, Italy.

Gamba: So, I'm Camilla Gamba. I'm a therapist in private practice in Milan, Italy.

 Tecuta: And I'm Lucia Tecuta. I'm a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist and a researcher at the University of Bologna, calling in from Bologna, Italy.

 Doherty: I know Lucia and Camilla through my eco training group, and I've actually been colleagues with them. We have not met in person, but we've been colleagues now for a while. So, it's been really exciting to track their innovative work in Italy around climate psychology and eco-therapy. And I know they've met Panu and Panu has spoken with them. So, this is a nice reunion for us. Panu, you want to get us started?

 Pihkala: Warm welcome also on my behalf, lovely to see you again. It also brings warm memories from last December and our meetings in Northern Italy. I know that you both have been listening to the podcast too, so you know that we have this habit of asking something about people's journeys that lead them to who they are so that's one for you also. It would be lovely to hear something like that.

 Gamba: Sure, Lucia, do you want to go first?

 Tecuta: So, I guess it's a little bit convoluted, but I would start off by saying a bit about how I grew up between Rome, which is where I was born, and then around the age of six I moved from, this big metropolitan city to the East Coast, to the States. I lived a little in Maryland, a little in New Jersey, so I moved from a more urban context to a more, I guess, privileged area. And I had the privilege of growing up with a backyard in Maryland. So, I feel like that's where I really started to appreciate nature and develop that nature connection that was missing for me while I was a kid, living in a big city.

I think part of why I do the work that I do right now, sort of coming full circle from my early experiences, is and actually I heard someone talk about this book in their childhood on another podcast about how they came across this book called 100 Ways Kids Can Save the Planet. I was drawn to it as a kid and that's really where I started to become more aware of what was happening. It was the 90s and Al Gore was vice president and there was a lot of talk about the ozone layer, and I remember being a little bit anxious about that. Now that I look back as a researcher that looks at eco-anxiety, I recognized my feelings as a kid as a form of eco-anxiety that I was feeling at the time. And then that ecological awareness went dormant a little bit through middle school and high school. Then, I moved back to Rome when I was a teenager and came into contact with pretty politicized youth. That's where I became more aware of the economic and social systems that we live in and social injustice.

It all came together for me in the last couple of years through my awareness of climate change. I had some events that really shook me, to use a colloquial term. Most of that is the really intense heat waves that are coming through Italy in the summer. Part of that is also the really bad hailstorms that came through Bologna. This was all right before COVID. I would call it an eco-awakening. After those events, it sorts of all came together and I realized how it's all connected. And that brought back that ecological awareness that was lost throughout the years. And I think also becoming a mother had a big impact on me, just everything sort of you know multiply times a hundred. Just being scared not only for myself and my family origin but also now my son and his future and future generations and what they're going up against.

And then, I guess coincidentally, if you believe in coincidences or synchronicities, I guess another term we could use. I had the chance to sort of brainstorm on psychological constructs to study in relationship to sustainability and eating behaviors. And I was looking at the literature and I actually found your paper, Panu, on climate anxiety and eco-anxiety. And that just rang like a thousand bells in my brain. And I realized, this is what I was feeling first of all. So, it was really validating and really important for me to put those pieces together. And then I was able to give that as an idea that we could look at this, in relation to eating sustainably, but also eating disorder risk. We don't really know how these things sort of move together. And so that's how I feel like everything sort of came full circle starting from like my early childhood experience and the teenage years and being really politicized and coming into contact with anarchists and communists and socialists and all of that. And then the climate eco-awakening bit. And so, I feel like I've finally started to find my place in what I think I should be doing. That’s also thanks to your course, Thomas, that really helped me. It's a big, big puzzle piece to all of this. And then meeting like-minded colleagues who also became friends like Camilla. That's another big piece of this.

Doherty: Yeah, eco friends, as we say.

Tecuta: Eco friends, yeah, to take a turn from your past podcast. So yeah, that's my journey in all of this.

Gamba: Yeah, so my journey is not too different from Lucia. I was born in Milan. My dad's Italian. I lived here until I was eight. Back then, now still to some degree, but back then there was a lot of cement and a lot of air pollution. And then, we moved to California where my mom is originally from. It was a much healthier style there I'd say, where we were growing up in Davis, California. I moved back to Italy when I was 18 and kind of like Lucia was saying, in my time in school in California, I had a lot of awareness of ecology, ecological crisis, and starting to be aware of climate change. So, to some degree, I feel like I've always had climate anxiety without knowing what it was. And then, I like the term used Lucia, the idea that it was dormant for a while. And then in 2021, it was in the middle of the California wildfires and COVID. And I went back visiting from Italy and had what I can call now an eco-awakening. Back then, it just felt like something really disturbing was happening. And so, I did what you do, which is you Google your symptoms and somehow came across the term eco-anxiety and came across your website Thomas or maybe some of the videos you had on YouTube and I found it really interesting. I signed up for the course and, like Lucia was saying, a lot of the puzzle pieces started coming together and then something interesting happened, again the synchronicity, Lucia and I are in this WhatsApp group of English-speaking therapists in Italy. It's an informal group.

Then, I think one day Lucia posted something about research on climate anxiety. And I just jumped in there and said, hey you also know about this very niche thing in Italy, because at the time, it felt like I knew very few people who were talking about this. And then we just kind of rolled with it. We took the course with Thomas; we started translating a few things that we thought would be useful. We translated the Climate Psychology Alliance handbook into Italian as well as the climate emotion wheel, we thought that was a really cool tool. So, that's kind of how we got started. And Thomas definitely also gave us the courage to say, just get in there and do the work, even if you don't feel like you know it all. You don't have to know it all to start doing this work, so here we are.

Pihkala: Thanks for sharing all that. That's very interesting and wonderful to hear. There are similarities in people's journeys and then all kinds of nuances and differences. So that's always very interesting to hear. And we'd love to talk a bit more about the actual work you are doing around climate psychology and environmental psychology in Italy. But perhaps we could start by asking you something about the Italian relationships to the modern human world and perhaps especially if that has an impact on how people see issues related to climate change and environmental change. I know this is a very big question and there's a lot of variation inside each country, but it would be interesting to hear some of your observations on that.

Gamba: Sure. I think one of the first things to say is that Italy is a very varied country, meaning each region has its own very specific history, its own language, now they call them dialects, and its own culture. So, I think it depends on where you go and also thinking about the specific history in relation to the land, how the land has been used over time, who's been occupying and using the land and who hasn't is very different from region to region. A lot of Italy is very densely populated and a lot of the territory, if it's not urban, it's most likely agriculture. So maybe that's one piece around the relationship to nature. And then we have the Alps and the mountains, which are maybe one of the few places that people can go to and do go to if they want to feel that they can get away and commune with nature. We're sharing with Lucia, thinking about how we can represent Italians' relationship to nature? It's a tricky one because it's been very built up. The coasts, for example, cater to a certain type of tourism. I feel like there's very little nature left there. There's a lot of cement, a lot of places that cater to tourists who maybe want to go and listen to music and dance and be on the beach with their aperitivo. The same is happening more and more to the mountains, ski resorts. So, there is some tension around that.

Tecuta: Yeah, there's been a lot of, I guess what you could call illegal construction or development in a lot of natural areas. For example, a lot of the coast is privatized with what I guess is called beach clubs. So, I guess the relationship with nature, I don't want to use words that are too strong, is not particularly respectful in that sense. A lot of destruction.

Gamba: It feels like nature's been sacrificed to cater to economic wants.

Tecuta: Right, economic growth and tourism, like Camilla was saying, that's definitely a big, big issue. So, it's very difficult. I imagine for whoever's involved in conservation efforts and things like that. And Italy went through quite a dramatic economic boom, I guess in the 60s. I think after World War II, there's definitely a lot of poverty and hardship, a lot of migration from the South to the North, from Southern agricultural areas to the Northern cities that promised more work opportunities. So, it's dramatically changed probably in the last 70, 80 years or so. And I feel like in the Italian collective unconscious, this idea of an association between being in the city, and probably this is common in a lot of cultures and countries, but moving to the city or living in a city is associated with having made it somehow, right? Having left, sort of poor conditions and hardships. So, it's hard to find outside of specific environments, for example mountain areas, an appreciation and a respect for nature.

Gamba: Yeah, it's also really hard to find in Italy. Coming from California where we have big wilderness spaces, it's really hard in Italy to find large, intact, healthy ecosystems. In Italian, we don't even have a word for wilderness, which I always thought was really interesting. But having said this about certain types of tourism, there are a few trends that I think are interesting. One is hiking and people really wanting to enjoy the mountains for what they are. In Italy we have the CAI, it's the Club Alpino Italiano. It's a really large non-profit organization which is in charge of what the US Forest Service does. So, they make sure that the trails are kept nicely and they do a lot of trainings and things like that. They have a fantastic rescue service, which I recently had the opportunity to test. I broke my ankle hiking, and I got a really good rescue operation taking place. So, shout out to the CAI volunteers or all volunteers. And then another interesting trend is what we call here agriturismo. So, tourism that goes to agricultural places is one of the ways to reconnect with nature. They might be going to farmhouses or places where they're enjoying both the place and the environment, but also the food. Because of course, food is a big part of the culture here.

Tecuta: Yeah, there is definitely a movement for slow food, organic farming. And it's interesting, there's also a very niche trend of younger people. Most of them sort of migrate from the south to the northern cities to go to university or whatever, but then being frustrated and sort of disillusioned by the economic crises and the recessions and not finding jobs easily. Some of them are actually moving back south, back to more natural settings and even opening up their own small farms and going back to those kinds of roots. So that's another interesting trend, sort of trying to take care also of whatever nature is left. And then there's also another interesting movement now that I think about which is confiscated lands from the mafia. There are several associations that take those lands and of course they try to clean them up or try to give them back to the people and turn them into something socially useful. And you can even buy some products in some supermarkets that use whatever grains or raw materials to make pasta, coffee, or whatever it is. And so, when you buy that product, you're buying something that's from the confiscated mafia lands. And you're giving money to these really great initiatives. So, there's little niche movements here and there that kind of give you hope that some good is happening.

Pihkala: Yeah, that's very interesting and for many listeners depending on where you come from. It's fascinating to think about these geographical and ecological factors. In Europe, we have places like the Netherlands, where there's even more management of nature, more than the human world. Then in Italy, there's more than in Finland, partly because there's been more population and older human history, so there's been more time to spread. I have to mention a very interesting historical novel by Mika Waltari, the greatest historical novel writer of Finland in 20th century, which is about the time of the Etruscans and that transition time where there were still animistic beliefs in Italy among the old tribes, but slowly the Roman Empire was building up and the changes were happening. Anyway, that's slightly an anecdote. But Lucia, you went in the direction of counter movements. And I would guess that if there's a strong utilitarian hegemonic attitude, there might also be more ecological counter movements. And I met some interesting young people, shout to Lorenzo also here. So, would you like to say a bit about those?

Tecuta: Sure, I think Camilla's more familiar with the work that Lorenzo does, if you wanted to talk about that.

Gamba: Yeah, I'm trying to think of what Lorenzo's doing, but also the network. I think that's also really interesting. I think the counter movement also involves a lot of just people pooling resources together in a very informal way. And so maybe some people like Lorenzo are bringing in a lot of eco-somatic work. There are different people doing different pieces, the psyche and the local lands and the community and the body. They’re putting all these different pieces together. That’s kind of what's coming to mind, maybe like this web that different people are weaving. And yes, Lorenzo is part of the web and Lucia and everybody doing a little piece and creating altogether in this counter movement. Nobody has the manual of how to do it. And I think we're all just trying something different and doing it together and seeing what works. There is definitely a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of interest. Maybe we don't know exactly where we're all going with this, but it's kind of fun to watch it evolve and emerge. I don't know, Lucia, if you have a similar view of all this.

Tecuta: Yeah, I mean there's growing interest and curiosity in people that work in more mainstream settings. Like we've been contacted by journalists recently to talk about climate psychology and nature connection. We're trying to propose workshops and collaborate with them. For example, there’s the Earth Festival that's coming up in Turin in November that we're thinking of offering a workshop at and yeah, it's definitely a work in process.

Gamba: Yeah, it's sort of a new thing to be a psychologist and to be talking about nature more than the human world and climate change. I think one of the things we've been finding is the more we are getting to know people, the more people are getting to know about the work, then we're starting to get interest. And so, then it's about planning and writing project proposals and getting funding. Lucia and I are just about to finish recording an eight-hour climate anxiety eco-psychology course that's going to be available for therapists as part of their continuing education credit. So, there are lots of things emerging.

Doherty: Yeah, this is really wonderful. This is what we hoped to do today. We also talked to Matteo Innocenti recently and we'll have an episode. He's a psychiatrist in Italy that you both know. And of course, he's working on disasters and the flooding. That's another whole theme we could get into, which we don't have to get into details. I think the general theme that I'm hearing over all of this episode, and listeners, you can think about this, is just the idea of translation as a theme. Like we're translating these ideas. Both Lucia and Camilla have this international cosmopolitan life where they know American culture and Italian culture. So, they're translating and there's a really fruitful translation. Well, obviously many people in America idolize Italy and the land and the connection with family and the whole culture. And of course, there's this idea of rewilding and being in nature and wilderness and these kinds of values for the US. So, there's this cross theme, which is beautiful.

There are so many more connections, we can't forget Pope Francis and his work as being one of the most potentially one of the most influential environmentalists of our era and I know the Catholic Church is also huge and diverse as well, but still we have these voices. We’ve got the pilgrimage tracks in Italy and the religious culture and its working land and nature. It’s just that depth of modern human history that literally you can excavate ruins. So, it is beautiful. So, I feel like you both are so well positioned because the pressures of climate change are going to make people more aware of their connections with nature. Years and years ago, Theodore Roszak was talking about eco-psychology, and he wanted people's connection with nature to be a celebration and something they love, not just a way called a grim duty to say the planet. So, I feel like there's this synergy between, I don't know what the word in Italian is, like joie de vivre or life philosophy, which is very nature based and the pressures of climate change and how to preserve. I think preservation of some of these treasured ways is also going to have to be a thing. Even with the Olympics and potential for snow in the Alps. So, you're just really well positioned to do whatever you can. You know, just do your part and then help new people.

Gamba: Yeah, the theme of translation is here, but another image that comes to mind is pollinators. You know, taking something good from here and bringing it over there and then making your eco-friends along the way. And so having that be a fun journey.

Tecuta: Yeah, definitely. And trying to also mesh different values. Because if we're talking about, I can't generalize to all Italians, the sort of long history of seeing nature as something tied to hardship and to work and trying to bring in seeing nature as something that is inherently valuable can be difficult to do sometimes, but really, really important. Especially in the context of everything that's happening, Olympics included. And not forget that or get carried away with just destroying what you need to destroy to make room for new stuff. That's definitely a theme for me.

Pihkala: What are some of the things, Lucia and Camilla, that you are passionate about when you think about the next couple of years and your sort of vocation on this planet?

Gamba: I think the whole theme of climate change is really important and I've been trying to get up to speed with being knowledgeable about what's happening and that's really important, but I do feel so much more joy when it comes to fostering nature connection and being in nature. I’m starting to do walk and talk therapy and trying to shift the setting of my work to more natural spaces. And what's really fun about this, going back to the eco-friends, is we've got a group of therapists who are wanting to do that together. So, the peer supervision thing to have that spread in Italy and to maybe get our professional boards on board with this to help us out with guidelines and insurance and all of that. That's something that I'm feeling really excited about.

Tecuta: Yeah, I think the same here. I'm working mostly as a researcher right now, but what I'd really like to do is spend way more time and dedicate more time to, besides the trainings that we're doing for colleagues and psychotherapists, working education or higher training or whatever is working more in the community. So even doing more workshops, like the ones that we've just started doing together to use nature connection, but I kind of want to say as a leverage that you should care about climate change as well. And sort of using that as Thomas was saying, use the joy to get people on board on what's happening, which is pretty dramatic here in Italy. The changes are quite drastic already and we’re seeing a lot of it. So, I would love to find a way of putting the two together and offering something that does spark change and hopefully get bigger players on board because you need the funding to do this kind of thing. So, that's definitely the direction where I'm headed hopefully.

Doherty: Yeah, this is great. As always, we could go on. We say every episode we could do another half an hour because there's so much to talk about. But listeners, I think this scratched the surface of the broad cultural trends in Italy and things that are going on. And we'll have some links to things that people might want to look at in our show notes. Camilla and Lucia, you can let us know about your training and various things. Maybe in that joy theme, and Panu and I are both really into language and this idea, what could listeners around the world take away as a word or a concept from Italian culture? You don't have to have the perfect one, but what are some things that come up about words or phrases or concepts that evoke this connection with nature, beauty, family, and the earth.

Gamba: So, the first thing just popped into my head, so I won't think too hard about whether it's a good answer or not. It's the “irimedi della Nonna.” It's a big thing. So grandmother's remedies. So that's usually the first go-to thing. If you have an upset stomach or a runny nose or a headache or cramps or whatever, then you're going to go to “irimedi della Nonna,” which is bound to be nature-based.

Tecuta: Yeah, that's a good one.

Doherty: Yeah, that's beautiful. We'll get the proper spelling of that. Make sure we get it in there.

Tecuta: I actually thought of another one which is so typically Italian, the one that everyone knows, but I don't know if it's right for this context, but the one that came to mind is “il dolce farniente,” which is like the sweetness of doing nothing. And I like it in the context of climate change and everything that's happening to our political and economic system as a way that's subversive. You don't have to consume, you don't have to produce, you could just be. I think it ties really well with enjoying nature. Because in nature, it doesn't ask anything of you, right? Which I think is something that's so great that you get from nature connection. You're not there as a consumer, as a worker, as a part of this machine like the system that we live in.

Gamba: Yeah, and there is a sweetness to that, right. Il dolce, the sweet, farniente, doing nothing.

Tecuta: Yeah, enjoying just being because that's so important to recharge to be able to stay in the movement for the long run if we're thinking about climate change related work.

Doherty: It's perfect. In the U.S., we have this idea of rest is resistance and then the nap ministry, which is a radical claiming of an African American culture of claiming the ability to rest. So, there's a radical side to it. I think my stereotype of Italy is that you might rush a little bit in the city, but people don't rush. That's not a cool thing to do. You want to be elegant and move slowly and savor life and so I think that's a piece. I also think that joy of being in the sun or being in nature and just this the fruit of and sweetness of life is a multicultural ideal and it is something that gets threatened and taken away. So, it's something we have to protect and teach people to do and teach our children to do.

Gamba: Yeah, and Italians are really good about enjoying the food and they want it to be from good ingredients. Mindful eating is partly embedded in Italian culture and just being aware of the ingredients and where they're coming from.

Doherty: Yeah. So, breaking down some of these artificial barriers between wilderness and nature and being the right environmentalist and all this kind of stuff. This has been great. We're going to stay in connection because we're all working on shared projects. And I have been to Italy years ago, when I was younger, but I look forward to getting back again.

Gamba: Yeah, it would be great to meet you in person.

Tecuta: Yeah, let us know.

Doherty: Yeah. Well, Panu, what's the rest of your evening like here?

Pihkala: Thank you very much, Lucia and Camilla. It's been wonderful discussing these things with you. I really loved the words. I think I'm going to practice some blessed undoing for the evening.

Tecuta: Good idea.

Doherty: And where are you both going today for the rest of your evenings?

Gamba: Just relaxing at home. We've been working hard, Lucia and I, so I think a good rest is resistance maybe.

Tecuta: Yeah, exactly. I could rest relatively because I have an almost four-year-old coming back from school soon. So, I'll try to come up with some restful games to play with him.

Doherty: All right. Well, this has been beautiful.

Gamba: Thank you so much.

Tecuta: Thank you for the opportunity to chat.

Doherty: Listeners, I hope you enjoyed our little international cosmopolitan translating conversation today. Listeners and all of you, be well. Take care.

Pihkala: Take care.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

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.

The Climate Change and Happiness podcast is focusing on our colleagues in Italy this season. In this episode, Thomas and Panu spoke with Milan psychiatrist Matteo Innocenti to discuss the growing awareness of climate psychology in the country. Matteo described his personal journey inspired by witnessing the effects of pollution in South Asia and how the COVID-era loss of his grandfather—a key environmental role model —inspired Matteo to devote his research to nature and issues like climate anxiety.

image credit | asaf

With the coming of spring in the northern hemisphere, Thomas and Panu looked ahead to the summer and reflected on how we can no longer take for granted (or trust) that the seasons will be as they were before. What may have been a benign and clement season may now bring unexpected and uncomfortable weather – and even extreme or dangerous conditions. This profound change affects our mood, identity, families, and life plans. They referenced their own experiences and examples from art and literature. Join us and prepare for your own new season. 

Links

• Zadie Smith: Elegy for a country’s seasons

• Poem by SZ Chao: “Not all warmth consoles” 

• Soft Loft Summer Sadness

• Lana Del Ray Summer Sadness 

• John Cox Weather For Dummies 

• US NOAA / National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center Long Range Forecasts

• Australia 2025 Summer Forecast 

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness (CC&H), 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.

Doherty: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, this is our podcast. It’s a show for people around the world who are thinking and feeling deeply about climate change and global warming and the environment and our lives and our wellbeing and our happiness to the provocative question of what it means to be happy in the modern world. And this is one of the Thomas and Panu dialogues. We haven't had a chance to just talk amongst ourselves for a little bit and catch up on the world. We have a bit of a theme because we're looking ahead to the summer in the northern hemisphere so that's sort of our theme or coping with seasonal changes and hopefully being able to roll with all the changes in our world. So that's our theme for today. Panu, what's the latest from Finland? How are things going over there? What have you been up to?

Pihkala: Thanks for asking and spring has finally arrived in Finland. Well, it's been sort of back and forth and global warming makes it more random. So, already in March there were some really nice days, but then we had a period of really cold, nasty wind from the north type of days, and we had some spring flowers covered in snow, which makes for a kind of nice aesthetic effect, the whiteness of the snow combined with the colors of the flowers, but it's not very good for the flowers themselves. But now it is warm, young people are going out on the streets of Helsinki, lots of students there. Easter is coming and on one hand, there's lots of good spring full energy around and then on the other hand, Finns are of course worried about the global, political, economic, and environmental situation as so many people are around the world. So, it's a mix of things as usual.

Doherty: Hmm, so we have the seasons that we know really well, like spring, I could talk about that here. It’s high spring here where I live in Portland. The daffodils bloomed a while ago, the trilliums have already peaked, the wildflowers, at least at the low elevation, and the higher elevation wildflowers are going to be coming in the next couple of months and literally the air is perfumed by blossoms. There's a bush in my neighbor's yard that smells nice, and I could smell it when I walk outside. And so, such a gentle, nice season, the spring. But yes, well, I'll share an anecdote and then we can get into it, but I actually got a chance to see the Portland Symphony yesterday. I've been trying to educate myself on classical music and they have a nature theme this season. And so, they had Beethoven's sixth symphony, Pastoral, which is a famous symphony that people in the know would know about. They also did Vaughan Williams, The Lark Ascending, which is another famous piece, an incredibly beautiful violin piece. The Pastoral Symphony was done around 1803. Like a lot of the symphonies, it's a programmatic symphony. It's about walking in meadows, and it tells a story of being in the Austrian meadows and mountains. But it's very formulaic in the sense that there is going to be a spring and it's going to happen this way and if you go to the mountains, you're going to find all this stuff. There's a sense of eternity about it, that this is it. I think that's part of the gist of this conundrum with the seasons that they still exist, but they're not as secure as they used to be. We can't trust that they're kind of eternal like the seasons of our grandparents. We literally can’t go back to the seasons of our grandparents. So, I think that's the rub of it.

Pihkala: Yeah, thanks for voicing that and I’m strongly resonating with that. In some earlier episodes of this podcast, we have touched upon the impacts of seasons on people, and I've shared that I have some symptoms of the seasonal affective disorder type, which for me the worst time is from November to February. So, I had to take some methods to cope with that. On a fundamental psychological level, I think that this continuation and alteration of seasons has been hugely important for people and a big source of safety, as you say, Thomas, and one might even speak about sort of ontological safety or security. I’m using a bit of a technical word but meaning that it's intimately tied with structures of the world. And there's some psychologists like Robert Jay Lifton, who we also have mentioned several times, who have observed the disturbing impacts of seasonal change or the randomness of it on people. And that seems to be affecting more and more people around the world. And on my desk at work is an article about various kinds of texts and eco-emotions. So, it's with literature scholars, that's one of my cooperation fronts so to speak, and it's quite interesting to observe what various writers, authors, and poets have written about this change of the seasons over the years.

Doherty: Yeah, there's a lot of directions to go, but we think about mood and music and then there's family, right? Because I think we were talking earlier, we all have our plans. I mean, people in the northern hemisphere often make plans for the summer season if they're going to try to take a break or a vacation or do something with their friends or their family or go outdoors. I have a wedding. My sister-in-law, Jessica, is getting married on the solstice, June 21st, in New England in Massachusetts in the US. So, people commit to things. They commit to travel or vacations or even really treasured things they've been planning for years. In the ‘old days’ you could just plan for the season. When I taught my wilderness therapy class at Lewis and Clark, we did a week camping in the graduate program. I always did it the second or third week of August in Oregon because it's statistically the driest time of the year. So, when you would go camping in the woods, it would generally not rain, and you know it's going to be nice. But now, I wouldn't do that because by that time in the season you could really have wildfire smoke. So that's changed. So, if I was going to plan that again, you'd want to plan it earlier in the season. I'm sure there's a listener out there that has a wedding this summer because people will get married in the summer. I'm sure there's someone who's planned a wedding and they're fretting about how the weather's going to be. And that's hard, but you can't just say okay I'm planning a solstice wedding, so I know the day is going to be long and it's going to be nice. I mean, hopefully it will be, but it could be hot and there could be wildfire smoke. We don't know.

Pihkala: Yeah, that's definitely the state of things now and it's impacting my inter-European travels because it may be so hot in Central Europe or Mediterranean Europe that for a Nordic person it's sort of too much. It's too much for some people who are living there and of course this theme of changing seasons is almost a matter of life or death for some people. For example, who get their living from agriculture or are living in areas where global warming is already causing very severe effects that the heat can be unbearable. So, I’m just wanting to name that. Most of our listeners probably are not living in such dire contexts, but if somebody from there is listening, I just want to say that we feel you.

Doherty: Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. That's also the gist of it too. There's social justice issues and environmental justice issues. There's the book, Tales of Two Planets, about stories of climate change in a divided world that I was looking at recently and edited by John Freeman, who's a famous literary person. There are two worlds. So, we have the people that are planning their wedding and they're catering for what hors d'oeuvres and snacks they're going to have at their wedding and then there are people that are afraid that their house might burn down or that they have to move and carry everything on their backs, as refugees. There’s a variety of people that listen to this podcast so we want to lean into the positive stuff that we can appreciate and know, but also recognize there's all these other unknown lives out there as well.

Pihkala: Yeah, exactly. And one of the texts I was reminded of when doing research for this article about eco-emotions and literature studies was by Zadie Smith, the famous writer who did an essay in 2014 called Elegy for a Country's Seasons. The ingress text is that it’s hard to keep apocalypse consistently in mind, especially if you want to get out of the bed in the morning. So that sort of resonates with quite a number of episodes we've been doing in this podcast. But Zadie Smith is also writing that every country has its own version of this local sadness related to changes in seasons. We'll put a link to that in the show notes and this genre of elegy. It goes close to lament, but it's related to sadness, and also related to beauty in a sort of deep way, and often to moral outrage. So, it's quite an interesting genre, I think. How would you pronounce it in English, by the way?

Doherty: Elegy, yeah. We'll put a link to that. It's a really beautiful essay that uses some dark humor and also talks about how the recent immigrants to the UK see it as this climate changed place with hot weather and flooding. Whereas the old school still has the Charles Dickens white Christmas memories when the river Thames would freeze over which doesn't happen anymore. It's ironic. I got a chance to go visit London with my daughter a couple summers ago and I got to take her there for the first time. I was speaking at a conference, and it was the hottest day in history when we were there. We were at the British Museum in London, and they had to close the museum down because it was too hot, and the air conditioning wasn't working. And actually, the second day after that was the hottest day. And we were at Stonehenge, seeing this incredible Neolithic site, which I thought about my whole life, and it was also the hottest day in history there. So that's what happens. And we survived it, and it was purely just a discomfort thing for us, not a survival thing per se. But it is ironic and for my daughter, who's 17, that is normal life, and it is so strange. If you're over 20, especially if you're over 30 or 40, it really is a different world. So that's wild.

Pihkala: Yeah, the sort of baseline assumptions of what the world and the weather and climate are like are different. And I think we've sometimes named in this podcast the technical term of ‘shifting baselines.’ Somebody has used ‘shifting baseline syndrome’ even to refer to what people tend to regard as a sort of normal environment and conditions, those ones which were prevailing when they were children themselves. And that means that it's difficult for members of different generations to really get a grip of how things were or are in the experienced world. So that's also a challenge for environmental education. And one of the things I'm doing right now is teaching this course on eco-emotions that I have designed and led at the University of Helsinki. It's online and I've recorded most of the lectures last year. So, it's mostly going through the students' essays and grading them. It's very interesting to read the reflections and, without revealing anyone's identity, I can say that there's some people who actually fear the summer. Exactly because they fear that it may be too hot and then if there's a lot of wildfires around, they feel global empathy and then they feel distress because of the news and knowledge about what's going on in the world and how other people and other animals suffer. So that's a thing happening in Finland also. When thinking about this, I was reminded of one of the poems in this 2020 poetry competition on the Climate Crisis and You by SZ Shao. The title is “Not All Warmth Consoles.” To fear the summer, the sweetness of fruit in decay is one line or a couple of lines from the poem. We'll put a link to that. So, some people are testifying to these kinds of emotions.

Doherty: Yeah, exactly. For listeners, you can take all this in. And this also applies to people in the Southern Hemisphere. I know Australia is on track to have the warmest winter in history. And the snowfall that they do have is likely to be less. I haven't looked at New Zealand, but I assume New Zealand is going to have a similar forecast. So, people who look forward to snow and skiing and the snowpack for the climate, will also change. So, it goes both ways. But listeners can think about all the different emotional parts of this, the practical parts of it, and the poetic parts of it. And then what to do… What do you think, Panu? How do you cope with this? Do you have any things you tell yourself? You have children and try to plan the summer as well and you have your life. How do you handle it in your family?

Pihkala: Yeah, well, there's plenty of dimensions to that issue and generally one way to cope is to write about it. So, I think that’s the poet who wrote “Not All Warmth Consoles.” Probably not the whole intention was related to coping, but that's part of it. Expressing some deep emotions and existential questions and thoughts. By doing that in public, it may also help others. And of course, it's a complex dynamic and it would be good for people to engage with arts that are sort of suitable for their situation. What I mean is that I think it's important that we have arts with various moods in relation to the ecological crisis. It would be good not to have just dystopian, catastrophic themed arts, or not just optimistic, how are we going to solve these issues type of arts, but a wide range of artworks. Then people can engage with various kinds of art. In my own family, the boys are now nine years and eleven years old, so they are growing up and thinking about things. The older one is a keen reader of newspapers. The Helsinki Times, Helsingin Sanomat has a kid’s newspaper which is a weekly paper. So that's been a nice one in sort of leading them into a culture of reading the news. And of course, I also try to recommend that he not read the news just before he goes to bed. It’s something that he often likes to do. By all estimations, he is not seriously distressed, but of course he is sort of worried and quite pessimistic about the planet's future. So, it's an interesting situation where I'm sort of keeping an eye and other senses open on what's actually in his body and mind and how he is feeling and coping. But so far, it seems that he's been able to hold that information but also enjoy life and function in the world at the same time. That I think goes to some of the quite deep dynamics of the matter.

Doherty: Yeah, that's an important point with children. So, it could go either way with children. Some children are naturally, I was going to say naive, but they don't think about these things. They're just looking forward to the summer and they're not overly thinking about the weather. But then some kids could really get into researching or even anxiety or catastrophizing or start researching disasters and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, as a parent, getting ahead of it yourself and like with all parent climate coping things, you've got to have your own house in order in terms of your own mood and how you're thinking about it. Moving toward it versus avoiding it, I guess.

Pihkala: Yeah, and I was about to ask, I know that you have been working hard in finishing the forthcoming book and I hear that the title is actually in the final form and will also be related to climate anxiety. What kind of advice about coping are you giving in the book? Would you like to share some of that?

Doherty: Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, Surviving Climate Anxiety: A Guide to Coping, Healing, and Thriving is going to come out this fall. And it's already on pre-order on Amazon. The first part of the book is about coping. There's a chapter on how to think, a chapter on how to feel, a chapter on your body, essentially, how to de-stress, and then the fourth chapter is how to adapt. I have the reader go through what I call their own IPCC report or their individual problems with climate change report, which is essentially kind of what we're talking about. It's like, what does your individual climate report look like? So where do you live, and what is the typical weather there, and how is it changing, and what are the dangers for you. It is literally like making your own climate report because you have to think about the history and what do we know and then what's going to change and how much can we predict based on what we already know, which we know a lot and where are my risk factors. So, it really works for anyone in any social class or any place because for some people, it’s worrying about their vacation property somewhere that's going to fall into the ocean because they're wealthy. The other person is worrying about whether their crop or their garden or their farm or orchard or their grape vineyard will survive. So, it's really looking at weather dangers where you live in storms or wildfires or smoke. But it's amazing when you actually lay it out, logically people can do it. You know, it's not that hard. The reason it's sequenced that way is because first of all, how are you thinking about this? Let’s get on top of your thoughts. Are you catastrophizing? Are you looking at both sides? Are you looking at the positive and negative? And then, what are your feelings? How do you feel? So that's all that writing. And then your body, of course. If you're freaked out and have a stress reaction and a fight or flight response, then you're not going to do well. But once you calm your body down, then suddenly you can have this logical inner dialogue about what are my risks. And then suddenly you're coping, you're adapting. It is possible to do. It's just that everything's happening so quickly and everybody's so overwhelmed that they're having a stress response and they don't know what they're feeling, and their thoughts are jumbled. And then, it's very difficult and it leads to this doomism kind of scenario. Does that make sense?

Pihkala: Yeah, it perfectly does. Thanks for sharing a bit about what's coming up there. In my work with the process model, for example, there's discussion of many linked dynamics and this reality that there's going to be different phases and stages and sometimes growth in coping skills. Then, there may be more difficult periods, but it all adds up. So, everything that we can learn in relation to how to think and feel as you say and how to cope. I would sort of offer that as a word of encouragement if there's somebody listening who feels a bit desperate about coping. So especially with the help of others, it's likely possible to grow in skills.

Doherty: Yeah, for sure. In terms of coping, there's a book called Weather for Dummies, which in the US, we have this series of books ‘for dummies’ that simplify topics by John Cox. It is really good. I know Bill Gates always recommends it in his reading lists and it is helpful to read that. Then, you could look at the US Climate Prediction Center from the government. Everything is in danger in the United States because of the great crisis in our central government. But we do traditionally have really good materials for climate prediction here in the U.S. All of that has unfortunately been politicized and a lot of it is being censored. But there is information that we can find so we can plan. So, there is no reason not to have a sense of what your season is going to be. And it's fairly clear that wetter places are going to be wetter, drier places are going to be drier, fiery places are going to be more fiery, stormy places are going to be more stormy. That's the gist of it. So, I think people can get ahead of this a little bit. Then there's all the music and the art. In my climate playlist for the book, I have a song called “Summer Sadness” by this band Soft Loft. And it's simply exactly what that is about feeling sad in the summer and trying to sort out things. The singer Lana Del Rey has another song called “Summertime Sadness” as well. So, there's a whole genre of songs that flirt with this idea of being sad in the summer for various reasons. And then there is summer seasonal affective disorder, a true psychological issue. The flip side of winter seasonal affective disorder where people get really irritable, they can't sleep. So, it's more an activated kind of depression in the summer than it would be in a more lethargic winter depression.

Pihkala: Yeah, when listening to you, Lana Del Rey's song started playing in my head, so that resonates. And listeners, there's a couple of episodes in the history of this podcast where we discussed these climate emotion playlists. And now, Thomas has some new playlist related to the book. So, I would recommend going back to those ones and music is also personally a major resource, both as listened to and as played. One thing we haven't revealed is that we actually got to play some music together when I was in Portland. There was the episode of us meeting in person and that was also nice, and I think something which is ancient and universal and hopefully that might happen more often again in Western industrialized societies - doing music together.

Doherty: Yeah, exactly. I think the takeaway as we wrap up today is thinking ahead to your season and committing to be your best self and to have your eyes wide open to what you're getting to so you can adapt. The other term is climate adaptation. So, we have to learn to adapt and change our life to fit the changed world and part of climate adaptation is survival and it's really basic. The basic base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We have to make sure we have food, shelter, clothing, but then there is self-actualization and living our lives and following through on our dreams. And life doesn't stop. So, it's all of that. And I think it is possible. Like anything else, the sooner we get thinking about it, the better in terms of getting ahead of things. Whether that be a vacation or a wedding or fixing your house up or your living situation or thinking about your job. I feel for people that are in really extreme situations with this, but all of us have our story. Well, let's wrap it up. This was really nice. I always get a lot out of these conversations. This is part of it, just talking about this with people especially those who care and understand. So, listeners, I hope you felt heard and witnessed out there. And yeah, keep us in mind at climatechangeandhappiness.com. Send us your thoughts or ideas. You can send a message to us on our website. And I wish everyone health, wealth, and safety here for the new season. Panu, what are you heading for the evening?

Pihkala: Well, since it is a nice, warm spring evening, I'm probably going to spend some time outdoors and take a look at those spring flowers. How's the day ahead for you, Thomas? It's your morning.

Doherty: Yeah, I've got to get some work done today. I've got to try to be productive today on my book project and on my psychology work and all this kind of stuff. But it is a really pleasant day as well. I also have to clean up my front porch, put my plants in better pots and do a lot of those seasonal spring things that are really pleasant. So, that's where I'm at today. Anyway, Panu, be well and listeners, be well. Everyone take care, keep in touch, and we'll talk to you next time. Bye bye.

Pihkala: Take care.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

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 | Mika Luoma

What does it mean to be self-sufficient and to live sustainably? How should we balance our use of modern technology with traditional living skills? Panu and Thomas discussed these and other questions with guests Mette Hartonen and Niilo Syväoja, who shared their perspectives as young adults from Finland. The group discussed ways to translate the concept of a self-sufficiency community to different cultural contexts – similar terms and ideas can include that of an eco-village, intentional community, or off-grid community, and practices of voluntary simplicity, traditional skills, living off the land, and permaculture, etc. Join us for an inspiring discussion.

Links

• Omavaraopisto School of Self-sufficiency

• European Ecovillage Network

• News Story: Mette, 21, lives independently and spends only 120 euros a month

• A Classic Self-Sufficiency Reference: John Seymour (first published in 1976) The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency

• Basics: 10 Important Traditional Skills

• 10 Off-Grid Communities You Should Consider

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness (CC&H), 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.

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, this is our podcast. This is a show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about climate change and other environmental issues and their relationship with nature and the natural world and the earth and how they make their living, and how they move through their day. And through Panu’s connections in Finland, we're lucky to have two guests with us today.

Mette: My name is Mette Hartonen, I'm 23 years old and I hope to live as sustainably as I can and teach those skills forward to others. 

Niilo: My name is Niilo Syväoja and I'm an actor and right now I want to act as an example and maybe a good elder for future generations.

Doherty: Great. Mette and Niilo, thank you so much for joining us. And Panu, I'll let you get us started. Maybe you can share a little bit about your connections in Finland and we'll be off and running.

Pihkala: Warmly welcome, Mette and Niilo. Very glad that you could make it. We've been meeting each other over the last years in various places. Niilo used to also work with youth workers and I think that's when we first met. I was advising a project which Niilo was organizing about climate change awareness for youth workers in cities and municipalities and things like that. And climate emotions were one part of that. Finland has a nice array of summer events. The sun hardly sets during summer, which gives good time for meetings. And with Mette, we've been meeting at this lovely arts and environment festival in Ärjänsaari, Ärjä Island, pretty far up to the north. That is also geographically pretty close to what is called Omavaraopisto, School of Self-Sufficiency. It has the original translation. We'll come back to some American ways of talking about similar issues like living off-grid and those kinds of things. You both have also, in Finnish media, talked about how increasing those skills of living self-sufficiently or sustainably or off-grid has brought feelings of efficacy and alleviated some eco-anxiety and distress. So, there's plenty of themes to talk about, but it would be lovely to hear a bit about your journeys towards this time and place where you are now. And if you want to talk about the ego or emotional dimensions of that journey, we would be most open for that also. So, whichever of you wants to start would be lovely to hear.

Mette: Yeah, I can begin. So, for me it started in high school when I got the burnout. I had studied really high, aiming for Harvard to study. And I just realized then that I want to live completely differently. I started for the first time to think about what do I actually value in life? And I got a dream of a garden and a quiet, calm place in a forest where I could live in a simple way. And at that time, I also started for the first time to read about the environment and seeing that the food that I buy from the shop can be grown with child labor or in unethical and unenvironmentally friendly ways. So I wanted to know where my food comes from and also the energy I get. So then I felt a huge amount of eco-anxiety and also loneliness because I was living in northern Finland where I was the only vegan in the whole town and I was really longing for finding people who could share the same values and interests. So, slowly I started going towards the dream. I first went to the wilderness guide school in Lapland. It was really nice to learn the skills and also recognize plants and mushrooms and living really simply. We had long camps in the fjälls and long trips. And while I was there, I found the School of Self-Sufficiency which was located really close to my home in northern Karelia. And I got to the course there and I felt really relieved and happy to find a way to live aligned with my values and also find like-minded people for the first time in my life. That was basically the dream I had. There's a course for half a year. There are ten students and we learn how to grow food with our bodywork, so using only hand tools, growing most of our food, then making the firewood from the forest that we use for cooking and baking and also heating the houses. And then we learn different handicrafts and building ecologically with hand tools and also repairing the houses. So I really loved it and felt the relief of being able to live in a way that I knew my food was ethically produced. And it came really close. It was environmentally friendly and I could feel the meaning in my life. Yeah, do you want to continue?

Pihkala: Warm thanks to Mette and before asking Niilo to tell more about his journey, let's just stop for a little while here because this is very inspiring and a great example of how dreams which may seem pretty distant at first may actually come true. It requires determination and perhaps intuition to follow them. These areas in Finland that Mette is talking about are heavily countryside areas and as she mentioned, being the only vegan in town, that still happens in that area and we can talk more about this School of Self-Sufficiency founded by Lasse Nordlund and Maria Dorff, so that's some old Finnish farms which are then used for these purposes. But Thomas, do you have anything on your mind before we give the floor to Niilo?

Doherty: No, I think that was great. I would just echo Panu the idea of the dream. We talk about environmental identity here in our podcast, you know, we have a sense of our identity in relation to nature and the natural world that sometimes it's in a place of becoming. We have a seed of it in ourselves, but it hasn't been allowed to blossom because we're not in the right place. So I think we have a journey to find this sense of place and this sense of environmental identity and I think, Mette, that's a beautiful story of finding your tribe. And that's a very practical concern of people. Being a vegan, for example, and living in a family or a community where that's not common. That would be an issue that many people would understand in the United States as well. Niilo, why don't you say a little bit about your story.

Niilo: Sure. So, like I said, I used to be a child actor and also as a young teenager, I was in films and TV here in Finland and I was seeing lots of interesting things in this industry. Then slowly, as a teenager, I started getting interested in activism, first human rights and then I heard this word permaculture, and this sustainable lifestyle movement and environmental movement came closer to my life. And I ended up going to this NGO working for youth, like Panu said in the introduction. There, I focused on environmental education projects and slowly I started to feel that I want to go even deeper, and I want my own lifestyle that I had in the city to change to be more rooted. I heard about this place called the School of Self-Sufficiency. It's the only school right now in Finland that gives this type of study. There's several in Sweden, for example, and in other places around the world, but I think in Finland, we are still starting. So, I went there and it was really something that I also had been hoping for, like what you talked about with finding your path and going towards your dreams. And really, I learned a lot there. Now, I think my ambition is to go further and we’re looking for a place to live in that lifestyle ourselves and also to promote this kind of way of living for a wider audience internationally, but especially here in Finland. I think there's a lot of potential and people who want to really start changing the world by starting to live themselves in a more healthy and holistic way, more connected to nature and themselves even. This is a short intro.

Pihkala: Whereabouts are you two living at the moment, just for the listeners?

Mette: We are right now in Sotkamo, where I am from, and so that's in northern Finland also. And we have been looking for a place and I have for a while worked as a journalist in the local magazine and written about environmental topics here.

Pihkala: Might that region then be a place for that kind of place you are describing where that lifestyle could be practiced and promoted?

Mette: Hopefully. Depends just where we find the place and where also people are around and yeah, we are pretty open for all of Finland 

Doherty: Yeah, this is great. We were talking earlier before we started recording how, at least here in the US, people are really focused on some really pressing disaster issues. As we're recording now here in early February of 2025, we've had some major disaster issues in the United States with the fires in Los Angeles. And there's different political upheavals and different reactionary political movements happening. It's easy to lose our focus and our connection with nature and the natural world and some of the basic things. So, it's nice to come back and put our feet back on the ground and I think, at least for Panu and I, perhaps some of the work that we're doing. So just to bring the listeners in, we have listeners in many countries and there's different terms and we can translate what Niilo and Mette are talking about into different ways. Niilo talked about permaculture, the idea of planting and setting up your living situation in rhythm with the cycles of nature. That is not a new idea. It's a universal idea that's talked about in many languages. Here in the US, we might have people that talk about being back to the land or living off the land or living off the grid or living a life of voluntary simplicity or using traditional living skills, either indigenous living skills, hunting gather skills or traditional handmade agriculture skills. We have intentional communities and ecovillages. So, this is a universal impulse, I think, and if we look at history, each generation and each time rediscovers this perennial idea for their own time. And we have our special unique time where we're living off the land and also talking on the internet across the globe in real time. So, it's just fascinating. I’m personally curious about this. We talk about managing news and technology and being on screens. How do you both balance and think about your use of technology, modern technologies like this communication we're doing with some of the traditional skills? How does that play out for you? Is that a struggle or do you feel like you find a way or are you still trying to figure it out?

Mette: Yeah, it's a good question. I have been exploring it. When I was first living in the School of Self-Sufficiency, I was probably one year without any smartphone or any connection to the internet except maybe once a month answering some email. So, I only had this old phone. And I really liked it. Then the shock was when I heard half a year later that Finland had joined NATO. So, I was in a bubble there. It was working for a while. If the world was in perfect condition, the surroundings of the place where I'm living would support the way I'm living. It would be possible, and I would love it. I use very little of the devices, I only have that old phone and then I use some random laptop for checking email and doing something else if that's needed. I think we also need a system change besides my own personal life choices. So that's why I want to also use the technology. Some old devices that are being used and thinking really carefully about the way I'm using them. So yeah, for me the shock was when I saw the closest forest near the place I was living was being locked down in two and a half years when I was living there. I realized that we need to do something so that our culture is promoting the more sustainable way of living. Because we were collecting a lot of berries and mushrooms from those forests, and they were really important in every sense just to go to a forest.

Pihkala: You mean that the forests were cut down?

Mette: Yes.

Doherty: How about you, Niilo? How do you manage the benefits and the shadow sides of technology? 

Niilo: Yeah, I've studied this topic with myself or trying to figure out my level of addiction to smartphones, for example. And right now, I'm in this situation. It's also a very privileged situation that I'm able to use my smartphone in a way that I put the screen on black and white and I removed even the browser and I use it mostly just for a regular phone and some internet bank account things or what is needed. But I really try to keep it somewhere out of my pocket and try to detach myself from this technological device, that is a high technological device. What we learned in the School of Self-Sufficiency was mostly doing things with low technology and that it's the most sustainable way to go about as a community also. And it was really nice actually having this social bubble where not many people have that much screen time in a day. Many people didn't have smartphones and it was really, really pleasurable to just talk with people who are in the room and not on some social media. So yeah, that's maybe one part of this path that many people choose instead of being on the virtual side of life that you also enjoy the connection with nature and other people that are living beings next to you.

Pihkala: Yeah, and the School of Self-Sufficiency method has sort of revived interests into early 20th century farming methods and machinery, for example, because those machines don't require a lot of electricity. They are quite durable, and the community element is much present. It used to be in the Finnish countryside that for some things you had to do, you had to invite others. There usually wasn't enough labor in the farmhouse, unless you were really privileged and living in a manor, but that was a different thing, sort of a community aspect and helping each other out. So, in a way, this is a return to some of those dynamics. This could lead into discussions about back to land movements and also about decrease of purity. So, for example, should one cut him or herself off completely from modern technology and life. But, for most of the Finnish Omavarais self-sufficiency folks I've met, they haven't gone for that completely. As I hear you say that there's some aim to be as little dependent on that as possible, but also then living practically or pragmatically in the contemporary world where sometimes, contemporary healthcare is quite good to have and so on. I think also for the topic of eco-emotions, this idea of not aiming for moral purity is very important because otherwise people may get up into endless loops of guilt or trying to strive for perfection and we have talked about this with Thomas in several episodes in the history of the podcast, but Thomas what's on your mind when listening to this?

Doherty: Oh, I'm enjoying the conversation. Yeah, many, many thoughts. I'm working on a book on coping with eco-anxiety and I've been thinking about a lot of these things and reading. I mean, what's old is new. If we had a time machine and we could go back to the 1840s in the US, we could bring Henry David Thoreau, who was talking about self-sufficiency at Walden Pond and growing his own food and building his own cabin and looking at society. And at that time, he was making fun of the telegraph because they had this newfangled telegraph machine that could tell you what was happening in Europe and people were scrambling to know what was going on in Europe. And he thought that was kind of silly. He says, why do you need the news? Why don't you focus on what was never old? So, it's like this idea we talk about how the news is outside your door. The news is your life. Your life is the news is what I tell clients when they're doing a news fast. Just open your door and walk outside. That's the news. That's the important news. The natural world and your family and people that are truly making change in the world aren't sitting watching the news. They're doing their life, you know? There's something very empowering and yeah, trying to be radical about it in the sense of standing up for your values, but not being so grim that you're judgmental on people and cultish about it is always a challenge. I'll just say, we've spoken to people in Nigeria, Jennifer Uchendu, and we've talked to folks doing different, similar voluntary simplicity lifestyles here in the US. So, listeners I think all of us have a strand in this and when we talk about it, it opens it up for us a little bit, this possibility.

Pihkala: Thanks Thomas for that and that leads me to a question I wanted to ask you, Niilo and Mette, which is how did your close ones react to this path that you have chosen? I bet that there have probably been different reactions by different people close to you and perhaps changes over time. But I would be interested in hearing about some of that social dimension. I hear that you have got a lot of new meaningful relationships via the process, but how about it all?

Mette: Well, my parents have always been really open. They just wanted me to be happy. So, I think that's a huge privilege and we have thought that maybe that's also a key thing that we have been able to make those radical choices or choices that seem radical in this society. Well, my grandpa, he wanted me to go to university. He still tells me to, but I can just understand him. Maybe some of my old friends found it difficult if they had no environmental interest at all. So then I feel a bit more distant towards them, but the closest ones have even been inspired. My grandma said that she would come to the school if she was even a bit younger because that's the childhood she has also lived, growing up in the countryside and growing food and living simply.

Niilo: Yeah, like Mette said, we have been privileged to have parents that have supported all kinds of things that we've been aiming in life and taking this maybe not so traditional path has been possible because of that. It's very important, I think this is connected also to talking about this social media and these global, virtual communities that we have right now. Being connected to old friends and people who think differently or live different types of lifestyles. I think it's really important when you make your own life choices that you also keep people around you that also think differently and then you can learn and they can learn also. So, the point in the school also is not to create a bubble for any community that I would like to stay in, that you would just try to find very cultishly like-minded people, but really to have this kind of wide range of thoughts and ideas also about environmental topics or anything that you can think of in life. So, I'm also happy that I have friends who do very different things in life. I just called a friend of mine who is an airline pilot a few days ago and we have very interesting conversations about energy and society and all these kinds of topics. I think that's something that's very important that I feel grateful for also, thanks for reminding me about it.

Doherty: Yeah, I think there's a possibility to be what I call a ‘climate cosmopolitan’ where you understand different subcultures and there are many people around the world who care about nature and the natural world and issues like climate change and they approach things differently. And I think the ideal is where you could be comfortable going to spend some time at the School of Self-Sufficiency and then maybe go find some scientists that are working on some interesting research and maybe go find some social activists that are working in the inner city and realize we're all part of a larger, diverse community but we all believe some of the basic things and being able to kind of speak many languages I guess you could say is one way to think about it.

Pihkala: Yeah, thanks for sharing that and very good to hear about it. Niilo, you mentioned you have this history of acting and also via our conversations, I know something about your creative efforts for both of you. But I'd like to ask you what role do you think that creativity and art play in your life and work? Handicrafts were mentioned, so I'm talking about creativity here in a wide sense. But would you like to share something about that?

Mette: Yeah, well, I think it's really important to be able to express myself in all ways. I think also in the School of Self-Sufficiency, I was able to think about more sustainable ways in doing that. Painting with coal or dancing and singing and what are immaterial things and also finding new ways in doing the work we have because the work is done with our bodies, so it is possible to, with good planning, use creativity and also create beautiful things to our surroundings. And I also see gardening as an art. It takes immersion skills to be able to grow forward. It can be so beautiful by creating a beautiful garden that's also giving us food that we actually need for living. So my path for looking for creativity is a big way on that also.

Niilo: Yeah, I can continue because gardening is really artistic work. Especially now I just realized that in acting, for example, the timing is the most important thing. And when you think about gardening, it's also very important to know what to do and at what time. You start sensing things around you, like on a theater stage or in a film scene, you also sense things like other actors and objects and what's going on. In nature and in gardening you also have to see that okay is it raining today, or do I need to water today, or these kinds of things and you can take it into very fine levels that the founders of the school, Lasse and Maria, have done. So, it was very interesting to see their artistic process and just watch them doing things. Whether it's building a log house or just breathing and resting or doing whatever, it's a holistic art of being. When you try to live more sustainably, there's no breaks in between you. The whole lifestyle is an artwork, if you would like to see it that way 

Pihkala: That's profound and for the English speakers to know, in Finnish language there's a concept called käsityötäide, literally meaning handwork art or handicraft art. And I hear you testify also to that, but to many other things.

Doherty: Yeah, things made by hand. Again, that's popular here where I live in Portland, Oregon. There's a lot of local artisans and craftspeople and what they call farm to table eating in restaurants where there's more direct connections between the city and the rural areas and the farming areas. So yeah, I do think that’s a universal human impulse. Every time there's an industrial revolution of some sort, there's a counter movement to bring back some of the things that we've lost. Sometimes to idealize old ways, but there's that practical thing, like you say, literally being with our bodies and our hands and our senses, we're kind of you rediscovering what it means to be human. From an evolutionary standpoint, our bodies are the same. Human bodies are the same as they were 200,000 years ago, exactly. It's the same, but our world around us has changed so much, but then oddly we have the ability to recreate almost every kind of human settlement if we want to. It's pretty fascinating.

Pihkala: Yeah, also fascinating has been this conversation which we soon have to start wrapping up to stay in our usual roughly 30-minute limit. There's been a lot of things closely related to coping with difficult eco-emotions here, either implicit or explicit, having a connection to others and to the modern human world, so-called nature, feeling the joy or pride or contentment when you are participating in growing something or seeing it grow or repairing something and doing something. And that dimension of emotions about the modern human world is perhaps not so often talked about, but I think it's hugely important these feelings of contentment and joy and even healthy pride sometimes. It's inspiring what you share with us, Niilo and Mette, and for the listeners, we don't want to give a picture that it's always easy to start these kinds of things. We haven't discussed the challenges and hardships very much and it hasn't always been easy for the Finnish School of Self-Sufficiency either. Let's not go into that in detail now. We don't have time for that, but through determination and collaboration, people have persevered. We'll put links in the show notes. There's an English introduction to that school also and some of the things that Niilo and Mette want to share. Any thoughts that you would like to briefly share before we start wrapping up, Niilo and Mette?

Mette: Yeah, I want to share the inspiration for learning. It was really a surprise to me that I could learn to grow food and most of my food and make firewood with an axe. And so, that's what I want to share. You can learn and there are people who are doing it. You can find them and then you can give yourself mercy in the learning that it takes time and you can listen to your pace and the possibilities and chances you have in life at each moment.

Niilo: Well said and yeah, what Panu was also pointing to is that there's a need for healing and regeneration in this time and this very meaningful lifestyle that you can find that has this holistic way of approaching things and also honestly about, for example, the energy descent that is happening right now. We are not basing our current society on any wisdom that is actually based on any truths. It's a bubble that is going to burst. That's maybe a harsh fact and a deep topic in itself to talk about the peak oil and all that kind of stuff. But if you look into that, maybe we can put the Nate Hagens link in the description or something like that to go deeply into this topic. This time is a changing event in human history. We are really at a point where energy is not going to be cheap in the future anymore. So, we need to change our way of how we see energy and how we work and how we build our life completely in a new way. So healing and regeneration are a very integral part of this change. I hope that everyone has this ability to share this caring and loving attitude to your own self and also others around you. Thank you.

Doherty: Well, that's also well said Niilo. And yes, the personal and the planetary are connected. So this is all good. This is such a great conversation. It brings me back to many positive things that I've done in my time that are similar to what you've been describing. So, listeners, I hope that this inspires you to follow these trends in your own life, wherever you happen to live, because this is a universal impulse at any place in the world. Listeners, thank you for your time. Panu, Niilo, Mette, I hope to meet you all sometime, possibly in person on the land. But as it was, it was really great to share this time with you all. Take care. 

Mette: Thank you.

Niilo: Thank you both. And also, thanks Panu for inviting us and being a very strong person in the Finnish scene of climate emotions. It's also been very useful on my path.

Pihkala: Thank you, Niilo. And thank you both for joining us.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

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 | Mara Ket

Thomas and Panu spoke with accomplished Swedish climate psychologist Frida Hylander. Frida shared her journey into climate psychology, the founding of Klimatpsychologerna, and the initiatives in Sweden to support individuals and communities dealing with climate anxiety. It was validating to see the parallels between climate and emotions initiatives in the US, Sweden and Finland and notably many of the barriers are the same, such as the challenge of being a student trying to find a program that combines the study of psychology, mental health therapy and climate issues. 

Links

• Frida Hylander: @fridahylander.bsky.social

• Climate Psyched

• Substack: Climate Psyched

• Swedish podcast Två Klimatpsykologer Möter (Two Climate Psychologists Meet)

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness (CC&H), 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.

Doherty: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, this is our podcast. It’s a show for people around the world who are thinking and feeling deeply about climate change and other kinds of environmental issues and all the different things that are connected with that. We like to say, we're all climate, all the time, all emotions, all the time. So, this is a time to be present with how we're feeling. We look at this in a lot of different ways and sometimes get serious and intellectual about the research and the background and also how this plays out in our personal lives and in our families. This is an international podcast, Panu’s in Finland and I'm in the United States and we do have listeners in 35 countries around the world. So, we do try to keep it international here and today we are keeping it international and we're lucky to have a guest with us.

Frida Hylander: Yes, hello. It’s lovely to be here. My name is Frida Hylander. I'm located in southern Sweden, Malmö. Yeah, very happy to be here.

Doherty: And, Frida, I'll have to make sure that I do this pronunciation as well as I can. That's a beautiful name. Panu, I know you both know each other and have had some familiarity with your work there. You want to get us started?

Pihkala: Warm welcome, Frida, also on my behalf. It’s lovely to meet you here. Finland and Sweden are neighbouring countries with a lot of common history. Luckily, the cooperation extends also to climate psychology and its various dimensions. So, we've met with Frida in that regard and Frida has been very active in the Swedish climate psychology scene. There's a very nice network of climate psychologists, Klimatpsychologerna, and we are going to talk about that more today, but there's also a newsletter in English called Climate Psyched that you have been writing and several of the fruits of your work are available also in English. Before we go into that in more detail, it would be lovely to hear a bit about your journey towards being so active with climate psychology. So, has that interest in the natural world been with you for a long time or how did it go?

Hylander: Yeah, so I'm a licensed psychologist and it's a specialist psychologist in psychological treatment and psychotherapy. But, as I was studying to become a psychologist, I also started studying human ecology, which is sort of an interdisciplinary field that investigates human's interactions with the ecosystems. And as I was studying that, I was really emotionally hit by the magnitude of the climate crisis. I think that's when I first sort of understood, both intellectually and emotionally, like how bad things were. This was back in 2008, 2009. Things were, in one way, looking better than they are now. Anyway, I was studying human ecology and I was really, really struck by climate anxiety even though I didn't have a word for that back then. I sort of struggled with that. But it also got me to really think that this is what I want to do for work. And I was really frustrated with my psychology studies because they were so individualized. We talked so much about what's going on internally and with people's thoughts and emotions and everything and different psychiatric diagnoses and stuff like that. But we talked very little about the surrounding world and what the future holds. I was very frustrated with my human ecology studies because we talked so much about the ecosystems and political ecology and inequalities and environmental injustices and so on, but we didn't talk about how people behave, how do groups, what makes different groups change, and how our society is formed and so on. So, I think that my path to becoming a climate psychologist or a psychologist working with climate psychology came very much from that frustration. So after I was finished with all of the practicalities to become a licensed psychologist, I started to find my way into working with this, but there's nowhere you can apply in Sweden to get a job as a climate psychologist. So, it's been sort of interesting trying to create that path, which I've done on my own, but very much more together with my colleagues in The Climate Psychologists, Klimatpsychologerna, which is a network that I co-founded back in 2018. Yeah, so I'm here due to anxiety and frustration, I guess.

Pihkala: That's a lovely testimony to the positive roots of negative emotions to use binary expressions. Thanks a lot for sharing that and that frustration with the individualistic tendencies in psychology. It’s something we have heard from many pioneering climate psychology folks in this podcast, including Ro Randall and Renée Lertzmann and others. Thomas, what's on your mind when listening to this Nordic story?

Doherty: Well, I'm really appreciating it, Frida. I was going to ask you about your background and if you found it difficult to study and so you answered that question. I can very much identify with that story and it's a very common story. I've just been trying to write about this actually for this manuscript that I'm working on. One way to think about it, these are transdisciplinary issues. They're issues that fall in between the academic subjects that we study and the scientific disciplines. And I literally have the experience where, students who are listening or academics will understand this, you go to the department and you say to the psychology department, professor, I'm a student and I want to study climate change and why people are concerned about these disasters. And they say, that's a really neat and really important thing but we don't work on the environment here. I want you to go down the hall to the environmental studies department and that's where they can help you look at this. Then, when you walk down the hall to the environmental studies department and you say, I want to study this, they say oh that's really interesting, but we don't do psychology and therapy here. Therapists are in this department, so they send you to the therapy department and it's a runaround and students are left in the middle. Tragically, some are even told not to take on this topic, it's too difficult, and you won't be able to get your degree so just do something safe now to get your degree. Then, you could work on this later, but then later sometimes never comes. So, it's a real issue.

Hylander: It is, yeah. And I think that's something that we very much notice here and as say the psychology education or psychology programs in Sweden, they still very much don't offer any training in these to prepare future psychologists to take on these issues. So that's something that we've been working on. I'm chairing a national organization for psychologists called Psychologists for Sustainable Development, which is part of our union and our professional national association. Part of the work we've been trying to do there is to contact the different psychology programs to see what they're offering and why they're not offering more on the climate and environmental issues, but also trying to explore what students feel like they need. And are students even aware that these are topics and issues that are important and that they will encounter in their future professional lives. But I would say it's not coming so much from the universities as it's perhaps coming from us or other engaged psychologists, unfortunately. And it's a slow process of trying to get stuff in. There are a few courses here and there in the psychology programs, but not very much. 

Pihkala: And that's roughly the situation also in Finland. The only longer university course on eco-emotions has been run by me as an interdisciplinary research course. So, it's one of these in-between things. And in Sweden, there's been the strong presence of Greta Thunberg and the children's and youth climate movement. That really started getting stronger in autumn 2018. That's when I also first met Greta at the Helsinki climate demonstration where we were both speaking. Well, she's done a lot more of that speaking since then, but would you like to share something to the international audience about how you see those years in Sweden? I know that that's very intimately connected with any climate psychology work in Sweden.

Hylander: Yeah, 2018 was the year that we founded Klimatpsychologerna, or the Climate Psychologists, which we did in March, so in springtime. We were trying to figure out what we should do and what's needed. What's the work that needs to be done or that we can offer. Then came a very, very hot summer in Sweden. And we had quite a lot of forest fires that were quite scary. There was something about that summer that I think made people up here more emotionally aware of the climate crisis because it all came close. Then, that was when Greta Thunberg started her school strike which, at first, she was doing everyday leading up to the Swedish election. Then, we had the Swedish national election and I think the Green Party did a terrible election. But I think they were still part of the government. I keep forgetting, but I think they were still part of the government with the social democrats back then. But anyways, I think something happened on sort of the national level. I think the very hot summer was part of that. The forest fires and then obviously Greta's school strike and the formation of the Fridays for Future movement. So, I think also for us, we noticed that all the sudden, the media also became aware that this is actually an issue that affects people on a more psychological and existential and emotional level. So, we got very busy straight away and I think that was very much due to the forest fires and Greta.

Pihkala: And probably also the IPCC report which came out that autumn.

Hylander: Yeah, I'm not sure though.

Pihkala: Oh okay, well at least in Finland that was a big thing in addition to the hot, hot summer and children getting activated.

Hylander: Yeah, I think that's true. If the IPCC report had come and none of the other stuff would have happened, I think it would have just probably been another report. But I think it was so highlighted by the other stuff that was going on. I think one thing that also happened in Sweden then was that people became aware that activism is also a way to take action, to do your part for the climate. So, I think it's also in one way helped to shift the conversation a little bit from the very individualized discourse that had been before into a slightly more taking collective action discourse.

Doherty: Yeah, this is helpful. I think this is a universal story in many ways that different countries in different regions have their collective waking up moments here. I got a chance to meet Nathan Grossman, some time ago, the filmmaker that worked with Greta and did some of the film about her life and her trip to the US and to the UN. I want to turn this to some of the more inspiring parts of the work too because we've been talking about the difficulty of the work and the trenches in academia and kudos to you Frida for being a self-starter and for forging a path. Panu and I know how that is as well. But it does start small, and you never know what's going to happen. When Nathan started filming Greta, she was just a young girl sitting outside the parliament and had no idea that it would turn into an international media event. Before you started asking these questions in your studies, we talk about environmental identity here and our sense of our relationship with nature in the natural world, and that's a deeper thing than our academic studies. It starts in our early life and our family and where we grew up and our home place. When you look back, what do you think are some of the origins of your connections with nature and your sense of yourself as a person on the planet like this 

Hylander: Yeah, it's funny. I've never really had a strong like nature identity or nature relatedness. I come from the west coast of Sweden, and I grew up in a sailing family. So, I think the sea and sailing has always been the closest sort of relationship I've had with nature, but I've never really been going out into the forest. I know some people have it very strong… I think I have that now much more, but that wasn't really how I came into this. I think my interests have been more urban, I guess, than nature related. But I've always been very, very interested in society and I really found the human ecology studies so immensely interesting. Also, to study about the political sides of how we use nature, but also how different groups across the globe use nature in different ways and how the Global North utilized resources from the Global South and then sort of sent back piles of shit. I think for me, that was more my way into this. But I think now, I have a much, much stronger and closer relationship with nature and maybe that also is something that perhaps comes with age, like my growing interest in growing plants and soil and everything. I also think it comes with this work and on a deeper level, realizing how immensely interdependent on nature we are and how we truly are nature, you know.

Pihkala: Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And speaking of Sweden's international contributions, those old Ingmar Bergman films often include sailing images. Listeners, if you want to take a look, you can try to search for those and those also really go to the existential level, both joy and sorrow and those kinds of things. We can put some links to the show notes. There's quite interesting research about Swedish environmental activists. I don't want to go into detailed academic discussions here, but for example, about how they relate to the Swedish version of climate anxiety concept, klimatongest, because that became heavily politicized. It seems to me that it became more politicized than in Finland. In Finland, there was a notable shift after the autumn 2018 and the next winter. Before that, for example, for me it was much easier to talk with countryside people about climate distress because there wasn't this politicization yet. Then things got more complicated anyway, but there's interesting things to be read and also on these global dimensions. There's one article, for example, where there's interviews and observations of climate activists in Sweden and in South America, and how the emotions which come up also have differences because of these cultural layers and global solidarity issues and so on. So, we are all interconnected. It might be very useful for the listeners to hear a bit more about what you have been doing with the climate psychology network. What have been some of your major aims and major methods?

Hylander: Yeah, so we do quite a lot of different things in Klimatpsychologerna and there's five of us now in our little network and we're all licensed psychologists, but we have some different niches. So, some of us are from more of the clinical side to the more organizational side and so myself and another one of my colleagues, we work clinically. So, we do take on clients and that's something that I've worked with in general as a psychologist. Over the years, I have had hundreds and hundreds of therapies with clients. In recent years, they're almost only focused on people with climate-related distress. And we usually say that that's not the first thing to do when you're distressed about the climate, to go and see a psychologist. But sometimes the distress becomes so unmanageable that it might be helpful to also have some therapy for that. We also do a lot of lecturing about climate psychology and behavioral change, especially focusing on large-scale behavior change. In recent years, we've also got more requests to lecture about climate anxiety and climate emotions and workshops about that as well. That can be for schools, institutions, sometimes we lecture at different universities, but also for large companies, so commercial companies. So that's very wide. We also work on different projects. Sometimes we're just like consultants, consulted in and we offer our expertise on climate psychology and behavioral change. And sometimes, we run our own projects. For example, last year we finished a three-year long project which was aimed at supporting young people with difficult climate emotions. In that project, we developed a lot of different methods and materials and did a lot of workshops out in schools with students but also with teachers to help teachers become more sort of well-equipped to support their students. And then we also try to educate about climate psychology. In Swedish we have a good word called folkbildare. I'm not sure, do you have that in Finland, Panu? It's not just like educate, but it's more like we want the people to become more educated.

Pihkala: Yeah, sometimes I think education researchers use the German concept of bildung to describe that. In Finnish it's sivistys also.

Hylander: Yeah, so maybe that's the best. Sivistys, yeah. So, we do that, and we also write texts. I have a monthly or bi-monthly now international newsletter called Climate Psyched. I also write columns for Sweden's largest environmental page Supermiljöbloggen and sometimes we write texts in different papers and stuff like that. We wrote one book back in 2019 and now we're in the process of writing a new book which will come out next year that will be in English. It’s with the working title Harnessing Collective Behavior, Climate Psychology, and Resilience, I think. So, we do quite a lot of different stuff. I also have a podcast with one of my colleagues which is in Swedish called, Två Klimatpsykologer Möter, where two climate psychologists meet with different guests.

Doherty: That's wonderful. Yeah, there's so many parallels. It's really nice to hear. It's very similar to the US. I have colleagues that are working with organizations and with businesses and with local governments and listeners, we're talking about some specialized terms here because in academia, certain psychologists work in organizations and businesses, some work with individuals, some do therapy. There tends to be people that specialize in all of these areas and they're all important. So, it is quite amazing how similar it sounds to what I've experienced in the United States. So, that on the one hand is very reassuring that we know we're on the right path.

Hylander: Yeah, hopefully. I think also, at least for us, there's been no path. So, it's very much been us trying to forge a path and with that, I guess that also comes with trying different things and working in different ways. And I think that also sort of works well with our analysis of the climate crisis, that there's no one thing that we need to do. There’s a multitude of things that we need to do, and we all need to use the competence that we have in various ways and try and reach different you know groups and companies and individuals in various ways. 

Doherty: Yeah, finding your place on the planet, digging in and taking action from there and trusting in the process. It's very hard right now. I know in the United States, we have a lot of very regressive politics happening that are really trying to censor. It's really quite strange because everyone knows the reality, but there’s still a lot of people working to try to erase, symbolically at least, the reality of climate change and various things and to address other social movements. So, in the face of that it's important to reach out across the world and realize that we're people are not alone. You know the takeaway from our episode and from all these episodes are listeners, whoever you are and wherever you are listening from, you're not alone. I mean we’re in every country. As you know, Frida, and probably talked about, 80 percent or more of people all around the world in every nation recognize climate change as an issue and want to make action a universal reality despite what governments in small places will try to do to turn back the clock. It's not possible. And so, the larger reality is here, and we are building this larger, more ecological world in all these steps. So, it is something to be aware of here.

Pihkala: Yeah, that's very inspiring, all the work that is going on. As so often happens in this podcast, half an hour goes very quickly and there would be many topics to dig deeper into. But Frida, I'd like to ask you about coping tips in your experience and you can approach this as a sort of combination of just a human being living in these times and as a licensed psychologist. So, what would be some of your top picks for how to cope with the world reality as it is?

Hylander: Well, I do think that one of the most important things that we all need in this time of parallel ongoing crisis is good social support. We need our little collective to feel that we're not alone. I think that is essential. I just sort of strengthen that belief with each person that I talk to that the social dimension is so immensely important and to feel that you're not alone and to feel that there are other people who share your emotions and worries and frustrations and sadness and sorrows and everything. So, I think that's key as much as finding ways of taking collective action and feeling that hopefully, with that, being able to feel like a sense of agency that there are things that we can do. We're not doomed. We're not helpless in this. Right now, there’s a strong, repressive and regressive wave sort of coming over us, but we're not helpless. And we need our collective and social support to feel that we do have agency. So, I think that's important. Then also just to find or give yourself permission to have and feel whatever you're feeling. I mean, it's so reasonable to feel whatever we might be feeling right now. We usually say that emotions are also information. They carry information about what's going on in the outside world, but they also carry information about what's important to us. So, if we're feeling worried or stressed or frustrated, that's also information about what's important to us. And I think that's something to honor in one way and just to give permission to that and to give some space to that. Then, I think the last thing that I would like to add to that is also how important it is to give yourself permission to pause from the big world and the ongoing crisis. I think that very much has to do with this being a marathon. This is the rest of our lives that we'll be dealing with the climate crisis and the other ongoing crisis. We also need to sustain that and to be able to do that. I think that we, every now and then, need to give ourselves permission to pause and to zoom in on the little life, but also to remember that there's so much in this world that's worth fighting for. There's so much in this world that makes all of the hard stuff worth it.

Doherty: Yeah, very well said. I know I'm personally validated to hear it's very similar to the things that I've been thinking about and writing about. And it's really nice to know that that's what you're all finding in Sweden as well. Well, Frida, thank you so much for coming. It's really nice. One of the things to be thankful for is that we have the opportunity for these dialogues around the world in real time. You and I have never met and here we are. Now we know a little bit about each other and can carry that into our days. Panu and I, being able to have these conversations twice a month, we feel connected and meet people. So, listeners, I hope you take something from this. If you're in Sweden or if you're in the United States or Finland or any other country, you're not alone in doing this work. We're Climate Change and Happiness. You can find us at climatechangeandhappiness.com. There will be some good notes about Frida's work and some of the links to her newsletter and upcoming book and all these kinds of great things. And Frida, Panu, listeners, everyone, be well and take care.

Pihkala: Thanks Frida, thanks a mycket.

Hylander: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

 [music: “CC&H theme music”]

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 | Toa Heftiba

Season 4, Episode 17: Eco-Friends Part II: Thomas and Panu Meet in Person!

Here’s to in-person connections! Most people don't know that up until just a few weeks ago Thomas and Panu had never met in person. They had connected over long distance and constructed their podcast dialogue over the last few years solely through electronic means. So, it is very special to us that this episode was recorded over Thomas's living room table in Portland Oregon while Panu was visiting during his tour of the United States. So, join us as the pair discuss their podcast relationship, current events, and what Panu has been seeing and learning during his visit to Charlottesville, Virginia and across Northern California, and his hikes in the redwoods. This episode goes well with our recent theme of eco-friends, and we hope it encourages you to re-connect — in person — with someone you care about and who also shares your care for people and planet.

Transcript

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness (CC&H), 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.

Doherty: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, this is our podcast. It’s a show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about the personal side of climate change, particularly their emotional responses and how they think about these issues and how it affects them in their daily life. And we have a special episode today. I was going to say I have

a special guest and that's technically true because I'm actually sitting here in person with Panu. A lot of people don't realize that we had never met in person until just two days ago. We've only known each other through a distance. Panu happens to be here in Portland and we're recording on-site in Portland, Oregon. So, we have a loose theme about connections, coping, and friendships. Panu's been traveling in the US and Panu, how are things going? How's your

Panu's trip to America been going so far?  

Pihkala: Thanks for asking, Thomas, and a great pleasure to be here in Portland live. I also want to credit our audio person, Mark, who is sitting close to us and who usually also operates online and takes care of sound quality. Thanks for that Mark. It’s been a while since I was in the states. I try to be mindful of the environmental emissions of travel and then with Covid-19. People have been surprised to hear that we’ve been doing this podcast for more than three and a half years and we’ve never met in person. So, that’s of course the great benefits of modern technology, that it’s possible to do this. But, on the other hand, it’s great to be here and meet live. What brought me to the states was a conference at Stanford that was about applying humanities research into societal and public spheres. Its official name is a bit technical: Applied Collaboratory for Religion and Ecology Scholarship. So, there was an emphasis on people who studied the relationship between religion and environment and that’s something we’ve touched upon in previous episodes of the podcast. But while I’m here, there have also been other talks and meetings. One in Charlottesville, Virginia that was about working with eco-anxiety between academia and society and then meetings in San Francisco with people in the climate psychology field and meeting various folks here in Portland. So, it's been a very interesting road trip done in quite curious times considering the political situation in states and other places.  

Doherty: So, you've been to the United States before and what are some of the things that you appreciate about the US. Or what are some things that you really enjoyed on this visit that are the best parts of this country?

Pihkala: People sometimes ask me that in Finland. What is it like to be in America? My longest period here was in 2011, almost half a year, when I was doing my PhD and that was mostly in Chicago but then also visiting other places. My only previous time on the West Coast was then in 2011. Since then, I’ve been to other places and there’s great wonderful people I’ve met on all of these journeys to the states. And of course, the landscapes and scenery are fabulous. It’s sometimes a challenge when you are living next to natural wonders at how much you are able to retain, an ability to appreciate how special those are. Well luckily many people do and there’s certainly lots of very special things around. Near the West Coast, during this trip, I had the pleasure of driving from Monterey to Oregon over many days. So, I saw the coastline and the mountains, and the Redwoods and those are really really special and reminded me of my early readings of folks like John Muir who loved the Redwoods. This was my first time seeing the Blue Ridge Mountains and they have some similarities with mountains in Scandinavia, there’s some ancient bedrock. But anyways, both people and the scenery. There’s lots of special things around here.

Doherty: Yeah, it can be really stressful if you get into the news and think about armed conflicts around the world and intolerance and economic issues and political problems. So, it's nice to remember that for a lot of us, we still like to visit people and travel, and there's nothing like going to a new place you've never seen before like the Redwood Forest in the US. You know, defies words, you have to see it to understand it. And how nice it is to be in other places like in Virginia, in Charlottesville, right? You were at the university there with Thomas Jefferson's architecture and things like that.

Pihkala: Yeah, it was a very interesting place. The University of Virginia, Charlottesville has this lawn and Jefferson designed the buildings around it and the students live right next to the lawn. So, during an ordinary evening, there's somebody playing the guitar and people doing sports. I joined a couple of guys doing frisbee. And that’s also something on one hand very ordinary but on the other hand so very important in times like this. These human connections and shared things to do and relaxation. I sometimes go distancing in the process muddle of eco-anxiety… Also, other classical things like hospitality along the road. I've certainly been benefiting a lot from that and I'm very grateful for that and luckily that human warmth we still have in the world even though the times are so tumultuous.

Doherty: Yeah, warmth. So, we recently recorded an episode with Gregory Hill who's a local environmental scientist here in town and is also a really old dear friend of mine. We have this idea of eco-friends, which I talk about in my upcoming book. It’s this idea of recognizing the friends that we have that inspire us in terms of nature and in the natural world and share our beliefs, share our values, share our connections, and share our outdoor activities. So, listeners, you can think about eco-friends that you have, people that you admire, or you know or that you do things together. I think it's really hard to do environmental work or to be environmentally minded without having some eco-friends. Or put another way, and you can tell me what you think about this Panu, but if you're trying to have an environmental identity or trying to do climate change work or any kind of sustainability work and you don't have any eco-friends, people to share that with, then I think it becomes really lonely and difficult.

Pihkala: Yeah, I totally agree and even though I have personally for a long time appreciated community and when I studied my university studies, I lived in a community for many years. But still, as times get harder, one really learns to appreciate community and as you said Thomas, as a theme that has come up in many episodes. For example, Laura Schmidt, the founder of Good Grief network and in her book, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate, she is summarizing community, community, community is something which is so needed. And that's something relevant in all corners of the world. It’s a very global thing even though, there's different kinds of privileges or injustices that people have to face when they try to build and upkeep those communities.

Doherty: Yeah, and we had a physical gathering here yesterday, actually at my home, where we gathered Panu and we had at least two guests that we've had in the podcast in the past, Mark, our production person, and other family members and friends and other really interesting people that were doing environmental work and sustainability work and many people had not met each other in person. And standing around the bonfire, it was really a good analog of connecting and people telling their stories. There were some students there that were younger, there were people that were more experienced and established. So, I think that's just such a key thing.

Pihkala: I’m very grateful to you for organizing that and having a bonfire. It’s a nice ancient element which brings people together and a similar dynamic was seen in San Francisco where people active in the Climate Psychology Alliance North America and other things like the work that reconnects networks. Folks came to talk with me and I gave a short presentation. Many said that they had never actually met each other live before. They live in the greater San Francisco Bay Area which is of course big, there’s been Covid-19, and everyone’s busy. So, I've been happy of this side effect of me being here and sort of helping gather people around that fact that some strange Finnish person is in town.

Doherty: Your visit is so rare that it draws people out to come and see you. There's a theme about maintaining connections, whether you do it over a distance, like Panu and I for almost four years have collaborated, worked together, created a podcast, and I've only just now met in

person just in the last couple of days. So, it's possible to collaborate with someone in another part of the world and really do meaningful work and know them quite well. And then you can also, if lucky, do it in person. So it's both. I have a question for you Panu and you might follow up but one part of travel, particularly going away from your country, is you get to come back home. So, I'm curious if you're already formulating some thoughts about what you want to bring home from your journey, you know, the hero's journey coming back to your community. So that's a question I had that leads to talking about your work. What do you have on your mind here? 

Pihkala: That's a good question. And when I've done travel, that has been an important part of my history, but I've done it less now during the last 10 years for many reasons and with the family, we’ve done shorter range travel and trips. In my solitary travels, I’ve kept journals and have written stuff and two of them I actually typed into electronic formats of my younger days, and it's been really fun to sometimes return to that.

Doherty: Oh, that’s nice.

Pihkala: And now, there’s so much happening that it’s been a return to some of that mentality which I thought would be mostly gone so it’s been lovely to return to that and sometimes admiring the beauty around you and getting immersed in that. Of course, there’s also been challenging tasks of talking about things like climate anxiety and emotion research in times like this. So, I haven't just been having a light, fun time, but there's been many things around. Now, I've kept a shortish journal with both drawings and text, so that's been a fun experiment.

Doherty: So you're keeping a journal now?

Pihkala: Yeah, much shorter, but then I draw some small pictures and write something. So that's been fun and something I try to bring home. That kind of energy of having been blessed with some lovely things around the journey. Another thing which I’m bringing is the encounters with American people who are stupefied by what’s happening in politics. I’ve met a lot of people who are very passionate about environmental work and climate work and now a lot of other things are getting attention and sometimes there’s pushback in some political spheres against environmental and climate work. So, resonating with that difficulty and those challenges while also being inspired by the determination of many of these people who keep on working on these matters. I see a very practical strategy of keeping together and holding that community strong so that one is able to do that in troubled times.

Doherty: Yeah, that's a good theme for our talk today, keeping community strong. I want to make a note about that. Because yeah, I think the paradox with this work is, as I often tell people, it's worse than you think and it's better. So, whenever you get into any environmental or any kind of social issue, you often find it's worse than you think. There are more problems, it’s more complicated, there's more corruption, there's more suffering than you realized. But then it's better also in the sense that there are people doing things. The paradox of my work recently is that even though I'm working on tough climate issues, I do positive stuff all day, like meeting with people like you and the people that were at this gathering that I just spoke about. I had a chance to meet with Emma Marris this morning who is a very accomplished nature writer and we were chatting and so, there's a lot of gifted people doing things and that's why I always come back to be careful of getting too lost in the news because when you're immersed in the news, you get a sense that the world is really going to heck and burning up and you don't realize all the positive stuff that's going on. But yeah, maintaining community I think is more important than ever, whether it's protecting universities here in the US. We've got a lot of negative energy coming out of the government that's really so counter to the Thomas Jefferson idea of creating a university and worshiping knowledge and truth and things like that. We have people that are really actively going against truth and free thinking and democracy and free speech. Creating community is not a soft thing. Creating community is a form of strength. So keeping community strong is also a way to be strong in the face of threats to health and democracy. So, more than ever, I think we need to get together and meet with people. So listeners, you can think about that. Can you make a point to really connect with people mindfully? That you respect and support each other and not fall into fear. It’s always nice to complain and vent with people that we know and share our frustrations and be heard. So, there's nothing wrong with that to a certain extent, but if the only thing you're doing is complaining and venting or cycling around in fear, that's not healthy either.

Pihkala: Yeah, I strongly resonate with that. And we have an episode coming out where we're discussing with Bob Doppelt who is one of the leaders in community resilience work amidst climate change. Both he and, for example, Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone have these exercises where people are asked to map things which affect them. Macy and Johnstone use this boat image, you know, what are some of the things that are weighing your boat down at the moment and what are some of the things that are lifting it up or carrying it forward. This can be done also explicitly in relation to social relations and community or relations with the modern human world. That’s something for you listeners, if you feel like it. It's sometimes useful to write these things down and think about how to find more balance and resources. And I guess, Thomas, that this comes pretty close to many methods that you use in your daily work. 

Doherty: Yeah. You know, I want to think that the idea that we've talked about in the podcast is the idea of your environmental identity and your sense of your own identity in relation to nature and the natural world and climate change. And there's like a timeline of your identity from your birth to the present and all these experiences that you have that make you who you are. Then we have a whole extending the timeline idea, right? So, from today, we have tomorrow, the next day and however long we're going to live. And then, of course, our influence extends beyond our life. We influence things that exist after us. It's really how do we want to extend our timeline? How do we want to show up for the rest of our life? There's always fear of death underlying almost all the stuff that's going on here and so how do we realize that we are here for a limited amount of time, and we need to do the best we can and realize that the things we believe in and are working on are much greater than we are and longer than we are, right?

Pihkala: Yeah, there's a nice existentialist dimension emerging in you, Thomas.

Doherty: Yes, it is. This came up recently about just getting comfortable talking about death as part of life. You don't have to dwell on it or make it the only thing, but if we don't name it, I feel like it's infiltrating. Certainly, people are fearful. Some people are fearful in the U .S. right now of the federal government. And it can be a fear of violence, a fear of violence of being deported, being targeted in some way. A very violent, intimidating style of political leadership has emerged in the United States and it does thrive on fear and bullying.

Pihkala: Yeah, this could lead into rather deep stuff and some of this we have touched upon in some previous episodes and just to name some dynamics, there's this very interesting research called Terror Management Theory and I think that's very relevant to the times in which we are living and sometimes when people are reminded of deep and challenging things like mortality or losing power, they may react by trying to upkeep things as they have used to be even though that sometimes may be impossible and lead to unethical issues. Of course, there are many ways that one can try to run away from mortality and finitude. As you said Thomas, the time perspective really convinced me about Robert Clifton’s ideas that people are looking for signs in which they can see continuation of life even amidst mortalities and communities is definitely one of these ways for some people. It's the biological offspring in the community and in the natural world those things which one continues. So just naming that there's some links to really profound things here and that's an ancient wisdom but if you’re engaged enough with mortality, that can really help you appreciate being alive and living. So, I think it's a pathway towards more joy than sorrow actually, even though it may seem counterintuitive at first.

Doherty: Yeah, because I think that the psychology around Terror Management Theory is that when you are reminded of death unconsciously, you tend to have these protective behaviors where you get really rigid about the status quo, but that's different than actually embracing your limited life and enjoying your life as it is. When you're open about it, it doesn't lead to

those unhealthy things as much. This is really great. So nice to be able to talk to Panu here in my living room, live. We're keeping our connection going, so listeners I want you to really think about your connections and your community and can you find someone to connect with soon like Panu and I are doing today? It doesn't have to be someone from another country, it could be someone from down the block. Do you have any inspirations or kinds of things you're looking forward to getting back to when you get home? I know you want to see your family and your children, but what else are you looking forward to when you get back to Finland?

Pihkala: Well yeah, two weeks is already a long time away from the family so I’m very happy to see them again and in the US, cherry trees are blossoming. In Finland, that will be in May so now I get the chance to experience early spring sort of a second time, but there might be some snow and ice when I get back home. Also in Finland, with colleagues and friends, we’re thinking about what kinds of social community and action would be needed in times like this. Taking it more seriously on how troubled times are and thinking if there would be more structures needed, like more gatherings and new kinds of being and doing. It's really a sort of diamond process of thinking about that series. But also, of course, I miss the sauna a lot. So, I'm really looking forward to getting back.

Doherty: Back to the family, back to the sauna. Well, Panu, it's really nice chatting with you. I will look forward to seeing you next time we record. Well, some of the next times we record we’ll be back online, but it's really nice to see you in person.

Pihkala: Likewise

Doherty: Panu, have a good rest of your trip and listeners and everyone, be well.

Pihkala: Be well.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

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image credit | Lauren Richmond

Season 4, Episode 16: On Eco-Friends with Gregory Hill

Thomas and Panu had a warm conversation with a long time friend and colleague of Thomas, environmental science and advocacy expert Gregory Hill. They explored the idea of “eco-friends”—the close personal relationships we have with friends and collaborators that support and inspire us in our environmental values and actions. Greg recounted his life from early connections with the desert lands of Arizona to his discovery of Buddhism and classic environmental literature, and his varied academic career. He described his research on the Pacific salmon and his service with First Nations peoples in Canada seeking legal sovereignty. The conversation highlighted the importance of the community we have and how our friendships contribute to the long term history and stability of our environmental identities. While friendships are certainly a form of social capital, our eco-friends are especially important to hold dear.

Links

• Centre for First Nations Governance

• Roderick Nash The Rights of Nature

• Cairns, Johannes, and Panu Pihkala. 2024. ‘How Western Buddhist Climate Activists Negotiate Climate Emotions’. Frontiers in Psychology

• Tropical Salvage 

• Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness (CC&H), 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.

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, this is our podcast. It’s a show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about climate change and other environmental issues. We pose this provocative question, what does it mean to be happy in the modern world? And Panu is an emotions researcher and I'm a psychologist. Panu’s in Finland and I'm in Portland, Oregon, Panu's evening, my morning. We're really happy about a few things. I'm going to introduce a special guest here in a moment. We've also been looking at some of our podcast stats for 2024 and we have listeners in 35 countries, all around the world. We have thousands of listeners. We're not a huge podcast, obviously, it's a specialized niche but we do have thousands of listeners. And so, listeners, I want you to know you're not alone. There are people coming from all around the world. Some of the countries you might imagine like the US, Canada, and the UK, but also Bulgaria, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, and Indonesia. And so, we have a lot of folks that are listening. And today, we have a special guest.

Gregory Hill: I think I'm going to introduce myself. I’m Gregory Hill. I'm an academic of all kinds of different subjects and hopefully still a good eco-friend.

Doherty: Yeah and Greg is here in Portland and he is a long standing friend of mine. Our episode theme today is this idea of eco-friends. It's a concept I kind of coined in this book manuscript I'm working on. It's not a complicated idea. It's just the idea that we have friends in the world that inspire us and help us to develop our own environmental identity and our own environmental values and we share our work and goals with them. Sometimes we work directly with them or sometimes we just hear what they're doing. Sometimes they're in a far field career from what we're doing, but I think everyone around the world can think about eco-friends that they have. It could be personal friends or family or colleagues or distant people. I would consider Panu and I to be eco-friends. We don't meet in person, but we know each other through the distance. And some friends are longstanding life friends and some are new. But that's the concept for today just to get into. So, listeners, I want you to be thinking about eco-friends that you might have and or can cultivate or find. Greg is a very interesting eco-friend. He's done a lot of things. He's originally from Arizona in the US and he's spent time growing up around the Grand Canyon and exploring in the Grand Canyon. He exemplifies a lot of the trend of environmental action over the last, you know, few decades. When he was younger, he worked in anti-nuclear weapons advocacy. He has worked around the world… In Indonesia in the forest reclaiming tropical wood, he has been a mathematician, an environmental studies professor, a baseball player, and a chess player. Now, recently, he does research on salmon and dams in the Northwest and works with First Nations people in Canada to assert their rights and autonomy. So really interesting possibilities. And Panu, I know you have eco-friends as well. And I'm sure in Finland, that's an idea that would go over well. Panu, do you want to get us started today?

Pihkala: Pleased to meet you, Greg. So, we have a quite different dynamic here between the three of us. I know that you two have indeed known each other for a long time, but Greg when you think about the roots of this vocation, you've had a strong interest and motivation to work with the natural world or the modern human world, what comes to your mind? What would you like to share about the roots and foundations and perhaps early life history in relation to that?

Bill: Well, the roots are certainly my mother. My parents moved to Arizona from Iowa. And my mother really took to the Sonoran Desert that I grew up in in Southern Arizona. Over my right shoulder here, I don't know if anybody can see this, there's a backpack and it's my mother's backpack. She and I would go backpacking together. Before backpacking, we were exploring the desert together when I was in the single digits age. So, she really taught me to appreciate nature, but also while appreciating the social life, like our social relationships. And that has percolated all the way through my entire career, where I study systems, specifically social ecological systems. I could talk just about my mother the entire time.  

Pihkala: That's a good sign of a person and I can actually see the backpack. Too bad dear listeners that you can’t see the visuals, but it still looks in good condition with various marks.

Hill: It's got a lot of badges on it, some of which were because of directions that I made my parents drive when we went to California. We would drive to California and I would make them stop at certain places like along the Pacific Crest Trail, which is a trail that goes all the way from Mexico to Canada, up the west side of the United States. I would make them get badges and some of those badges are right there. They've been there a long time.

Pihkala: Oh yeah, that's wonderful. You have this strong interest in learning systems approaches now. But were there earlier phases in your engagements with the natural world or was there something that first motivated you which led to developing a more systems-like approach? How did that work for you?

Hill: Well, the systems approach definitely took a lot longer to develop. My first kind of explorations, Thomas was referring to some of them, like my exploration of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. I was a member of a backpacking organization. I was with a friend and we were the youngest ones. We were, I think, 14 when we joined. It was a little controversial to have kids that young. We couldn't drive, for instance, but we got rides with people all the way up to the Grand Canyon. And I had some really incredible experiences up there as a youngster, both social and ecological. I would help people because there were some older people on these trips and going down into the Grand Canyon can be pretty rugged. One woman who is my friend's mother came with us and she was really struggling and I carried her backpack as well as my backpack out of the Grand Canyon. Combining that social engagement with nature is old for me. And I didn't think of it in a systems kind of way then, but it certainly came naturally to me later.

Pihkala: Hmm. Yeah and it also links with this theme that Thomas spoke about eco-friends who are friends who share environmental values or identity with you, or friends who share at least some parts of our journeys in relation to the modern human world. And there's often mentoring figures. We earlier, during an episode, talked with Louise Chawla who has done research on various things that affect people's relationship with the natural world. Usually when they are young, it's quite common to have at least some close person, perhaps a grandparent if not parents or an uncle or aunt or local Boy Scout leader or Girl Scout leader who becomes quite formational in leading us into a deeper engagement with what surrounds us. So in my mind that theme of mentoring and, broadly speaking, educating also links with this topic of eco-friendship. But what about you two? You said that you are eco-friends so how does that manifest in practice? What does it mean to be an eco-friend? 

Doherty: Yeah, I can share a little bit about it. Like a lot of friends, we have slightly different stories about our pasts and how we met, just like siblings will have different memories. But I'm just thinking about Greg in the Grand Canyon. For listeners who haven't been to the Grand Canyon, it's very deep. I've met people that grew up near the Alps, for example, or near other mountains and they from a young age learn to climb up the mountains and perhaps help guide other people up the mountains. But in the Grand Canyon, it's easy to get to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. You essentially just keep walking and rolling down to the bottom. But getting out is like climbing a mountain. So, I think that what Greg is saying, carrying that pack out is like carrying someone's pack up the Matterhorn or something like that.

Hill: Well that same group that I went to the Grand Canyon with, we also climbed a lot of mountains. So that's one thing that, for instance, is the same between me living here in Portland, Oregon and Arizona. It’s a very different climate from Arizona, but the same mountains. Not the same mountain range, but the same structure of the mountains. And so I feel at home, even though it's raining all the time here. And it's not raining in Arizona, let me tell you.

Doherty: Yeah, that's the system's perspective. We can see similarities around the world in different ecosystems. But how Greg and I met or at least my recollection of it… this would be coming on 25 or 23 years ago, I think. We actually met at a Zen meditation retreat at a place called the Great Vow Zen center here in Western Oregon which is a traditional American Zen monastery. And we actually met at a unique event. It was a deep ecology retreat at the Zen Center. And one of the speakers there was Michael Soulé, who was a conservation biologist, who’s one of the founders of conservation biology. It was this fruitful mashup of conservation and environmental consciousness and Buddhism, in this case, Zen Buddhism. And I think, Greg, that is one of the strong strands in your life that, if not introduced you to systems thinking, at least it kind of exemplifies systems thinking.

Hill: Indeed, yes. Zen Buddhism is something that I first encountered when I was 16. And I was a fan of the Beat Generation. And I somehow managed to get permission from my mother to drive all the way from Tucson to San Francisco. I didn't drive, but I had a friend who could drive and had a car. We actually drove nonstop from Tucson, Arizona to San Francisco. Now, not just any place in San Francisco, but to the City Lights Bookstore. Do either of you know the City Lights Bookstore?

Doherty: I do, yeah. 

Hill: It was kind of a home base for the Beat Generation and all those books. So, I went there. One of the people I read when I was reading about the Beat Generation was this guy, Gary Snyder, who was a poet. I really admired his poetry and he was also a Zen guy. And so, through reading his work when I was young, I learned about the San Francisco Zen Center when it was just starting up. So, I broke off from my little group of three people when we were visiting there and walked across downtown to the San Francisco Zen Center. I poked my head in, somebody greeted me, and I felt welcomed. For instance, I'm going back for a month-long retreat in three months. So, I've been with the San Francisco Zen Center for a long time. My favorite part of the San Francisco Zen Center is their farm, which is called Green Gulch Farm. And it's also a retreat center. It's one of those beautiful places that combines, I'm going to say it again, social and ecological engagement and how they're connected with each other. So that's the system between social and ecological.

Pihkala: Yeah, that's lovely and interesting to hear. I have a background in studying religion and environment, and Buddhism also comes from there. There's a book which might also interest some listeners by Roderick Nash, an environmental historian, called Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics which is quite interesting and also devotes several pages on Gary Snyder and the strong interest on Zen Buddhism in North America among environmentally minded people, but it's also related to present day activities. One of my dissertation students, who is also a young colleague, is a practicing Buddhist in Finland, but he's been doing extended interviews of Western engaged Buddhists in climate action. So that paper came out about a month ago and it's quite interesting to hear what the Buddhists have been able to give to the climate movement. There's some special features… so, that’s just some of my thoughts reflecting on what you said and I also see the connection between Buddhism and the systems approach between the social and ecological.

Doherty: Yeah, and I would just like to add, one of our favorite themes here is environmental identity and our sense of self in relation to nature and the natural world. And I often say that art and literature is part of our environmental identity. And you know, Greg's example is great. I know this is not unique to Greg or to Panu or to me. Many people are obviously influenced by Buddhism around the world, but also the Beat Generation and the poets and writers there and that lifestyle or that vision that they evoked in the US in the 1950s and 60s. And we don't necessarily think of it as an environmental identity at the time when we're younger. We’re just finding the world and absorbing everything. But, it does become part of our environmental ethos and leads us to value things and then take action, right? So, I think it's a fair statement, Greg, to say you've been an activist at times in your life, based on your social ecological values.

Hill: Oh yeah, and I have to share one thing that combines these. So, 60th anniversaries are a big deal in Japan. It's a time when you become an elder, and in Japan, that's a good thing. On the 60th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, my Zen community gathered together and went to Japan with the whole group for two weeks. I went for five weeks. So, I traveled on my own for quite a while. We had all sorts of engagements with anti-nuclear weapons work, the social engagement around Buddhism and particular Buddhist teachers, Dogen, I think of in particular. Then, traveling around Japan, on my own, was an incredible lesson in social engagement with others when we don't share a language. This may seem like a silly example, but I was traveling around on the trains and I went all the way south. There are trains everywhere and they really run on time. And the tickets tell you how to get to the next station in Japanese. I couldn't read Japanese at all. I could speak a little bit, but I couldn't read it at all. So, I would just get off the train, I would hold up my ticket in front of me and inevitably, a Japanese person would see my ticket, grab me by the hand, and walk me to the place I had to go. Even if it was just two minutes away. I was doing all this traveling like climbing mountains and that kind of kindness was really connecting all those things about socialization and how they're connected to the environment. It was very powerful to me. And I brought it back to Portland, Oregon. I had a meeting with a minister, not a minister that we have in the United States, but a minister of peace that’s a cabinet level position in Japan. A friend of mine who is bilingual, in Japanese and English, and incredibly tall, he’s 6' 11, arranged the meeting. He went to that minister with me and I made my case while he translated. At the end, this minister revealed that he had really good English and he said to me, “we have to do this.” And so, I brought all these artifacts from the bombings to Oregon to exhibit and I brought four Japanese men to herd around. That was really fun. The exhibit was on for two months. So, the Zen thing is also all mixed in with social and environmental stuff for me. It's a trifecta.

Doherty: Yeah, so you can see why I like Greg. He's just no lack of interesting stories and he really is a world citizen and it's inspiring. Where should we go in our conversation? Greg, in terms of our environmental identity and our eco-timeline, it continues our whole life and we're always extending that timeline and what is the Japanese name for the 60th birthday? If there's any Japanese listeners out there, you can remind us of the special name for that and you wear a special hat for your 60th birthday. 

Hill: Oh and you came to my 60th birthday party.

Doherty: Yeah, I did. Greg had a great gathering… talk about eco-friends. That was an incredible gathering of eco-friends.

Hill: Everyone around that table were eco-friends.

Doherty: It’s one of those things that when I have an old friend and they meet another of my old friends, it's often fairly quick that everyone connects. So, we don't even realize that we have a larger friend connection than we know because all of our eco-friends have eco-friends. And we're often all on the same page. At your party, you played a game and had truth or dare stories about your past, which I remember was fun which we won't go into now. But going forward, what are some ways that you're extending your timeline? I know that's a huge question, obviously, but what comes up for you? Maybe the First Nations work that you're doing in Canada or the salmon work?

Hill: Well, I've very recently been liberated. A lot of people call it retirement. For me, I don't have to grade papers anymore. And I am completely in charge of my daily routine, which took me a while to understand. I didn't retire very long ago, just a year ago, so I'm still learning how to do things, but I'm using this freedom I have now to do a lot of things that I wasn't able to do when I was pinned down by other people's schedules. For instance, one thing is I’m helping with a lot of partners to arrange, you mentioned the work I did with indigenous people in Canada. The main person there was this man named Satsan. And he, for instance, changed the constitution of the country through a legal process that took many years. That was all before I met him. It’s one thing to have the right to self-determination, which he got the legal part down where First Nations had the inherent right to self-governance. Before that, they weren’t even close to any right like that, so he won that right. But exerting that right is another thing. And that's where I worked with him and the system stuff came in really well. Because Satsan, when he was sent to residential school and taken away from his family, somehow got a book that was about systems thinking, with all the diagrams. So, he and I really connected on that level. We became really close partners and dear friends throughout many years. And now I'm trying to arrange a trip for him to the United States. Now the rule with him, since he's kind of famous now, is that he only does things that have national visibility, that make the news across Canada. I'm trying to do one that's based in the United States that still has that impact across Canada so I'm working on that. That's just one of the things I'm working on these days.

Doherty: Wow, that's great. So, you're really leveraging a lot now to make change that's going to affect history and people for generations to come.

Hill: Satsan’s the history maker. I'm the assistant to the history maker.

Doherty: Panu, what's coming up for you as you're listening and observing this eco-friend banter that we're having?

Pihkala: Well, it's fascinating how many things, Greg, you have been in touch with. I hear a strong commitment to justice issues. Some people nowadays use framing like climate justice or injustice and of course, environmental justice and I think that's an integral part of having a socio-ecological view on things or systems. Environmental organizations and institutions are luckily picking that up if they haven't done it before and for example, in Finland, the climate change expert panel, which is a national thing, did work many years ago on social acceptability and justice dimensions of climate issues so that's one part of trying to advance things on a practical level.  

Doherty: What's the most exciting part of this for you Greg as you have this freedom moving on from your teaching? We won't get into that, but you of course influenced a lot of students and people over the years. What's the equivalent of climbing the mountain or some challenge or task that you look forward to doing coming up?

Hill: I've had a really long and deep connection to Indonesia and to Southeast Asia, in general. A lot of it has been through a dear friend of mine who now lives in Portland. His name's Tim O'Brien. We have been back and forth between the United States and Indonesia for a long time. Part of that is connected to the environment, social stuff, and ethics. One outcome of that, which has only fairly recently found its full realization, is a forest-based carbon offset project. I've been told it’s the largest forest-based carbon offset project in the world. It's in Kalimantan and it's the work of two Indonesians, Rezal Kusumaatmadja and Dharsono Hartono. But Tim and I were definitely part of the team and that has only recently seen its full realization as a carbon offset project with all of the numbers. It was protecting a peat forest, which is probably the densest carbon offset per acre in the world. There was a peat forest that was in danger of being destroyed for its wood value and we managed to protect that. It’s really happening and I was excited about it. One of the people who was involved with that was in Portland recently and we had a good conversation about it and he's following up in Indonesia with solar stuff in Java. My whole time there was really exciting and I want to go back and Tim and I have, of course, plans to go back.

Doherty: Yeah, this is great, this web of friendship. I think it's a good place to wrap up our conversation today. Of course, we could go on and on, but it's that web and you keep following the web and it leads to more and more things and realizing that saving a forest these days isn't just about the forest, it's about the entire global ecosystem. That's one of the new insights of climate consciousness. It's not just the beauty of a particular place, although that's obviously important too. The integrity of an individual place has ramifications for the whole global system, and it comes back to the human and ecological systems as you were saying, Greg, we have to work together and then we have to have that big picture thought. This has been great. I really have been looking forward to having you on the podcast, Greg. It's a nice record of our relationship and sharing it with Panu and maybe Panu, we can have you bring an eco-friend next year as well. That would be nice. So, let's wrap it up. Listeners, I hope you got something out of this and your homework if you like is to think about and connect with your eco-friends and recognize that you are eco-friends and just name that because I think people will appreciate that. Otherwise, listeners, take care. And Greg and Panu, I'll let you have the last word.

Hill: I'm down with this eco-friends. Can we make it social eco-friends?

Doherty: Sure, I'll see you around the campfire soon. And Panu, where are you headed today?

Pihkala: Yeah, it's been a pleasure getting to know a bit about you, Greg. It's just a glimpse through the clouds to a large terrain. There's evidently lots of feeling grateful for that in the dark Finnish evening. It's the darkest time of the year, but this is soon about to change, so there's going to be more light.

Doherty: Yes. Anyway, listeners and everyone, find us at climatechangeandhappiness.com and I appreciate our listeners all around the world and everyone be well.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

image credit | Mario Purisic

Season 4, Episode 15: Climate Arts and Social Dreaming with Kamila Kuc and Julian Manley

Thomas and Panu connected with Julian Manley and Kamila Kuc who joined in from Scotland and London to explore the intersections of climate change, emotions and the arts. Kamila and Julian described their recent collaboration using the practice of social dreaming, a group process to discuss and find larger meaning, emotional reality, and direction from personal dreams. Hosting social dreaming gatherings is a powerful way to foster community dialogue about eco and climate emotions and support artistic practices such as poetry and film making. They had a rich dialogue about art, action, and ways to envision nature as an active participant in our collective dreams. 

Links

• Kamila Kuc 

• Films

• Julian Manley

• Manley 2018  Social Dreaming, Associative Thinking and Intensities of Affect

• Social Dreaming Workshop: Cadence 2025 – Reimagining Climate Futures: Creative Practices for Social Change 

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity. 

 [music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness (CC&H), 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.

Doherty: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, this is our podcast. It’s a show for people around the world who are thinking and feeling deeply about climate change and

other environmental issues. We talk about a lot of topics on this podcast. Our mission is to probe what it means to be happy in the modern world. We talk about our environmental values, beliefs, feelings, identity. And also, interesting endeavors and people who are working in different places on different interesting projects. We’re really glad and happy to have two very special and interesting guests today. Julian Manley is someone that we know who’s associated with this idea of social dreaming, which we’ll talk about. And he’s coming in from Scotland. And Kamila Kuc is a very interesting filmmaker who I know through various channels and who’s also now moving into studying and doing work around climate change, eco-therapy, climate therapy. So, we have both of these folks together, and there’s a number of connections with Julian and Kamila’s work to guests that we’ve had on this podcast and writing and work that Panu’s been doing. So, it’s a neat sort of personal and professional connection today. Panu, do you want to get us started?

Pihkala: Warm welcome also on my behalf. I’m very pleased to have you on our podcast.

We usually ask people something about their journeys towards engagement with climate change matters, whether that is via psychology or arts or social dreaming or many possibilities. But perhaps starting with Julian, would you like to tell us something about your journey? How did you become engaged with these topics?

Julian Manley: I was born in England and brought up in France, my mother is French, and then I lived for a while in Spain and now I’m back in Scotland and I think that moving around from place to place opens up your mind to different cultures and different environments. I studied English at university and that brought me into contact with the Romantic poets and through the Romantic poets, I began to have a specific and special interest in the connection between the human and the natural world. And since then, I’ve just developed those thoughts and ideas. I’ve become a director of the Climate Psychology Alliance and been very interested in understanding how psychology and psychoanalytical ideas can bring you closer to a relationship with nature. And, to an understanding of how society and relationships between people can be translated into relationships between people and nature and nature and people. So that’s the kind of journey I’ve been on until now.

Pihkala: Yeah, well thanks Julian for sharing that and greetings from the northern corner of Europe. I hear that you’ve been around many parts of Europe and I’ve been reading your work via books which have come through Climate Psychology Alliance and once had the privilege of meeting some Scottish Climate Psychology Alliance folks when visiting there. So, we have some connections, but how about you, Kamila? What would you like to share about your journey at this point?

Kamila Kuc: Yeah, thank you for having us. It’s such a great avenue to be having those conversations. I grew up in a small town in Poland, but I spent a lot of my childhood at my grandparent’s farm. My grandparent’s house was right at the edge of the forest, which is now half of its size, unfortunately. Then at the age of 19, I traveled between New York and Paris, and ended up in London. And I nowadays spend half of my time in London trying to get out to go surfing, mainly to Cornwall. I’ve always been interested in the topic of climate change, but I come to the topic from a perspective of an artist, a person that has worked a lot with communities. So typically, my work would take me to smaller places in the world. For example, my last previous film was made in the war-torn zone in Abkhazia, a place between Russian Federation and Georgia, where I worked with local communities about issues that they’re facing largely around war memories. Then, I worked with women at a care home in Morocco, with issues of abuse and poverty. But I’ve really been thinking recently about different methods of working with communities but on a slightly larger scale. So, I was thinking about what the biggest forces in the world right now that are affecting everybody. And of course, you know, climate change is the obvious one. That sort of hyper-object of climate change. I spent some time, about a year, studying it, and my connection with Thomas, learning about Panu’s work and connection with Julian through social dreaming conversations is how I arrived here and formed this perspective.

Doherty: Yeah, that’s really great. Every time we have guests, it’s always interesting to hear their backgrounds. And that’s why I love this idea of environmental identity or just this general open question of how is it that you come to this topic, because it just opens up the door to neat facets of people’s lives. Such as, where they grew up, their travels, and being multicultural or bicultural and the role of the landscape that forms us. That’s under the surface for everyone, but we just don’t think about it. You know, and another thing that’s under the surface is dreaming and our dreams. We know technically that all humans dream every night in some form through our sleep cycles and at different times and places, dreams arise to be part of culture or not. And so, I thought we’d talk about some of your individual projects and then get into these collaborations that are happening. But Julian, I know that you’ve done a lot of different kinds of work with people and you’re one of the leaders in this idea of social dreaming, which is a public outreach modality to get people to work together and think and feel differently about issues and be creative. I thought you could talk just a little bit in general terms about it so we could see how this fits into a lot of the themes that we’re talking about on the podcast.

Manley: Yeah, sure. The thing about social dreaming is that it’s asking people to get together in a group and share their nighttime dreams. So, we’re talking about actual dreams that people have. We’re not talking about dreams or ambitions about the future. And the innovation

in social dreaming is that you’re actually talking to people about dreams, but those dreams don’t belong to you as an individual when you’re talking about them in a group. Those dreams belong to the group as a whole. In other words, they belong to the social sphere. And that’s why we talk about the social unconscious or the associative unconscious when we talk about social dreaming. And it’s important to understand that dreaming is actually just thinking. It’s thinking when you’re asleep. So, one of things I’ve been interested in doing with social dreaming is to understand with other people that there’s nothing strange or unusual about sharing your dreams. Indigenous populations have been doing this for centuries, if not thousands of years. That’s because dreaming is just thinking while you’re asleep. And while you’re asleep, you can think about things in a different way. So, by sharing your dreams, you can share your thoughts about the world that you live in, but you can do it in a different

way to when you’re sharing something in a conscious way of thinking. And when we’re conscious, we try to rationalize things and we miss out on the important emotional aspects of how we relate to people and how we relate to the environment. And I think that’s really essential in lots of complex situations in life. But particularly, since we’re focusing a little bit on the climate emergency and our relationship with nature, it’s really anxiety provoking to imagine what’s happening with the end of the planet, more or less. The apocalypse coming up, the climate emergency.

That anxiety prevents us from taking action and this is what we can see in the world today. Despite the rational knowledge that climate change is caused by human intervention and by the burning of fossil fuels, we seem to find it very, very difficult to move forward. And that’s because we’re not connecting the emotional reality of what that means to the decisions we have to take. The work that we’ve been doing with social dreaming related to climate psychology has demonstrated that through thinking with social dreaming you can come to a clearer, better, more holistic, more complete understanding of the climate emergency. And if you can reach a more complete understanding of the climate emergency, then in theory, you can actually take decisions that make a difference.

Doherty: Yeah, this is beautiful. I have some thoughts that I want to share, but Panu, how is this dovetailing with your understanding of climate emotions in your work and what you see happening in Finland and other places?

Pihkala: Yeah, thanks Julian for introducing us to that. I work a lot with climate emotions and facilitate workshops, but not dream discussions. I know that there’s several psychotherapists in the climate psychology sphere who do that, and I’ve collaborated with some of them, like Sally Gillespie from Australia, who comes more from a Jungian perspective and dreams are very important in her work. She’s been discussing those with workshop members. The way in which some deep emotions and thoughts of ours appear in dreams is very fascinating and years ago there was this book by Michael Otis Hill called Dreaming the End of the World which was fascinating and quite heavy to read because it’s so evocative and the images can be quite powerful. I find this topic very fascinating, but how does that resonate with your work, Kamila? What’s the connection points?

Kuc: Yeah, thank you. I was just thinking about how Julian and I met at some conference outside of London some years ago. And then during COVID, Julian and I held a series of social dreaming matrices with Duke University. Do you remember, Julian? We spent long days and evenings, I think once a week, doing matrices and that was really amazing because in my artistic practice, I’ve always been interested in working with dreams. But this has opened a completely different avenue because, Julian, you used that phrase beautifully with emotional reality and how, when you let that dream go, once it’s in a matrix, it kind of belongs to everybody and it’s a much more, in some ways, neutral way of discussing difficult emotions and difficult ideas. So, for me, the social dreaming has become kind of a, I don’t want to say a tool because I don’t know that that’s the right word, but it’s become a sort of vehicle for me to connect with people and all different communities. So, one of the most important components of the project that we’re currently working on, which all of you are part of, is social dreaming matrices, which hopefully Julian will be able to deliver many of them.

But the idea, as Julian mentioned, is how you connect people and more importantly, how you connect people who might have very disparate ideas about the same topic. But I think that emotional reality is really important because particularly with the climate crisis, we know the facts, we know the numbers, but there is also that idea of yours, Thomas, of climate hostages. Like what Julian said, that anxiety that we have is so paralyzing that we end up with this kind of wide-mouthed apocalypse narratives and meanwhile nobody is doing anything. So, I think my response to that through my artistic practice is to create collaborations, artistic alliances, but also create groups of people where we can think through those ideas through creative practices.

Doherty: Yeah, it’s fascinating. So, listeners, you can think about this. The meta message with a lot of our conversations is that solutions, ideas, and creativity are happening in real time with real people that are meeting each other at conferences and working together. Panu and I work together on this podcast and Kamila and Julian are working on things. A lot of its about active collaboration. The idea of a social dreaming group is called a matrix or matrice and a matrix is sort of a mold or an environment where things grow out of. So, this is the kind of matrice of all our work. I’m talking about listeners and everyone. We’re all working together in some form with people. One equalizing factor for humans, for better and worse, is that we all have dreams, in terms of visions and goals, but we also all have dreams. All humans dream, no matter what your political party is. I think a lot of people are closet dream lovers and don’t necessarily know how to talk about it.

I remember when I worked with young people doing outdoor wilderness therapy years ago, one of my most favorite parts of these three-week long expeditions in the forest or in the desert is that every morning we would have a dream circle with the young people. And I was, as a therapist, using it very strategically to check in on the kids and see how they were doing. But you learn so much from people when they talk about their dreams, because of course we were thinking differently, and certain parts of our brain are on and certain parts of our brain are off. It was a little bit of social dreaming, in another form, because we would share our dreams together. But it was therapy so we were always focused on interpreting and putting it inside the person, as traditional Freudian dream interpretation would be. But this is different, right? With social dreaming, we are using our dreams to connect in real time. So, it’s not about some sort of mystical collected unconscious that exists in another reality. It’s literally our collective unconscious that’s manifesting right here in the day. Right Julian? That’s part of it?

Manley: Yeah, that’s right. And I think the advantage of social dreaming is that it actually is not therapy. It’s very important to understand that it isn’t therapy. We’re thinking together with the thoughts that we had in our nighttime thinking. And as soon as we understand that, sharing your dreams doesn’t become something unusual, it becomes something natural. And if you ever do social dreaming, you’d be quite surprised how natural it feels. Maybe the first five minutes feel a bit odd and a bit strange because you come in with your prejudices about dreams. You kind of think, my dream is my intimate private thing so I’m not going to share it with others. But actually, five minutes into a social dreaming matrix, people just flow with their dreams. And it just demonstrates how natural the entire process is.

But I also want to say something else, Thomas. And that is that it’s not just about actual dreams, it’s about dream thinking. In other words, there might be some people in a matrix who don’t often dream or who never dream. That doesn’t mean they’re excluded from sharing the dream time with people, because we’re talking about a state of reverie, a dream state. This is a little bit like daydreaming, so people can get involved in the images from other people’s dreams and they can associate to those dreams with images that float into their minds even if they don’t actually have dreams themselves. And so, nobody’s left out. It’s a very inclusive, democratic space where everybody, no matter how much or how little they dream, can become involved.

So, that’s a really important aspect of dreams and I say that because I myself don’t dream very much as a matter of fact. People kind of expect that I’m a dreamer and I dream ten times a night. It’s actually not the case. I dream very little, but I never feel excluded, and I’ve never met anyone who said to me that’s terrible or that’s not for me because I just don’t dream and therefore, I wasn’t involved. That’s not the case at all because we can all daydream. And what is that? What is daydreaming? It’s creativity and that’s where the link comes into art and filmmaking. It’s creativity in the imagination producing visual images and that’s not so far removed from filmmaking.

Kuc: Yeah Julian, do remember one of the matrices? Maybe you can talk a little bit about what happens post matrix. That sort of meaning making session. Do remember one of the matrices during COVID when one of the recurring symbols in everybody’s dream was an octopus? Do remember that? Because that for me was one of the most powerful matrices. Could you say a little bit more about that meaning making session that happens after the matrix?

Manley: Yeah, sure. Well, there’s always one image that seems to capture people’s imagination and Kamila is referring to this particular image of the octopus that came up in a series of social dream matrices. And the point about that kind of image is that within the image, there’s all sorts of potential interpretations. And each person in the matrix can have their own interpretation of what that particular image might mean. So, there’s no conflict in the interpretation of the image because all interpretations are held within the single image. Within the image of the octopus, you can have all sorts of ideas like talking about the tentacles, the eight possibilities, the intelligence of the octopus, which tells us something about our relationship with the non-human, and so on and so forth. However, even though Kamila’s put me on the spot and asked me to interpret the image of the octopus,

I also want to say that the experience of social dreaming is an embodied experience. In other words, when you’re in the matrix, you feel the affective power of the dreams and what’s happening in the matrix. It’s actually much more difficult to describe it when you’re out of the embodied experience. Nevertheless, as part of social dreaming, you have a social dreaming matrix for say about 60 minutes. And after that, you have a meaning making session because it’s important to understand that during the actual social dreaming matrix itself, we don’t interpret dreams. We don’t judge people for their dreams. There’s no sense of any conscious, explicit meaning making in the matrix itself, because all the images are allowed to float and people make their own connections in their own minds as they wish. But after the matrix, there’s a post-matrix discussion where we get out of the dream mode, and we get more into the standard mode of thinking. And we do that to give people a chance to digest and process the different dreams and feelings in the matrix. I say dreams and feelings because in the images, what you have are often deep emotions, so you need time after the matrix to process those emotions. That’s kind of ethically correct as well as important to help people understand how to make some kind of sense of what’s been going on in the matrix previously. So, the post-Matrix discussion may last about 30 minutes or 45 minutes.

Doherty: Yeah, this is really great. It’s a state of mind so we’re working with and cultivating a state of mind, a state of being. I think that’s a mini rite of passage where you go into this more reverie state. Kamila, you’re an artist and you’re envisioning doing a fairly ambitious program that’s integrating Panu’s work on environmental emotion and my work on environmental identity. It’s the same with environmental identity. After a few minutes of talking about it, you can’t stop people from talking about it because everyone has an environmental identity, and they like to talk about it. Just like I think they like to talk about their dreams. And you’re a filmmaker. You’ve done interesting documentary style, artistic work and activism. What’s your vision? Now this is your dream, I guess more in the real world. But what’s your vision for some of this project for other listeners to get inspired by.

Kuc: Yeah, thank you. I guess the project you’re referring to is a project I’ve been discussing with both you and Julian for quite some time now. It’s tentatively called Hyperobjects and Climate Hostages. This is a working title as we are applying for funds, but really the idea is to engage a group of diverse participants in four different locations in the world in conversations about climate crisis and try and see what conversations we can have through artistic practices within the topic of climate crisis. So currently the project is based in Seattle, Detroit, London, and Coventry. I know there have been some noises that Poland is quite interested. I’m hoping we might go to Finland at some point potentially. There are definitely opportunities there, but I guess the idea is that we’ll engage in a series of ecological identity map workshops, which is potentially where you and Panu can come in as well as conversations obviously about climate crisis, but also creative arts workshops. So, filmmaking, poetry, performance art, and social dreaming matrices.

And out of that will come a feature film that’s multi-authored and has diverse perspective in it. In different parts of the world, we’re working with different people. So, in London, I’m hoping to collaborate with elderly and neurodiverse populations. In Detroit, we’re currently working with Yemeni and African American populations. And in Seattle, indigenous populations. So, we’re really trying to debunk a lot of those white man saviorism and apocalyptic narratives about a climate crisis and see what we can do and what we can learn about the climate crisis through creative practices.

Thomas, you mentioned my recent training. I’m currently training at Seattle University as a social justice and multicultural counselor. I’m interested in all the social justice issues that do come up for a lot of different communities. So, I guess, there’s a couple of things that I just want to finish with that needless to say, we don’t see climate crisis as just an environmental issue. It’s a social justice issue. And it is also, as I see it, a crisis of representation. What is the image of climate crisis? How do we represent it? Here’s me as an artist interested in innovating with methods of working with different communities and different participants. How do we need to adapt? So, we have project leads in every location and are in dialogue with people from the community, so we don’t impose any frameworks on any community. So, everything is a dialogue and negotiation to really try and create a space for all those different perspectives to come out and social dreaming is obviously crucial part of it.

Doherty: It’s amazing. Let me ask you a very quick question. So, this seems to be taking your work to another scale or another level. So, listeners out there who are inspired but feel like they would never have the guts to take on something like this. What helps you to do it? What have you learned practically that you think helps you to take on something like this? I know it’s a big question, but does anything come to your mind?

Kuc: No, thank you for that question because I was trying to figure out how to squeeze everything in. But I think, like I said, for me, the answer to everything is really group work and its collaborations. And if I may, I would like to give a shout-out to few people and organizations that have been so responsive to the project from the very beginning. Obviously, all of you are here, which I’m very grateful for you being part of the project. But in Seattle, we’re working with Cadence Video Poetry Festival, Rana San, Chelsea Werner-Jatzke, and Seattle University, who is also one of the funders of the project. These are people originally who I’ve gotten in touch with, and they came on board quickly. In Detroit, I want to give a shout-out an amazing organization, Augusta Morrison at Sidewalk, Bulk Space, Jessica Ali, but also Mothlight Artist Collective, who will be delivering a lot of 60-millimeter workshops. Also, Julia Yezbick and Shanna Maurizi. In London, Laura Fischer and Traumascapes, an organization that is funded by Laura, who is a counselor, but they work primarily in the context of trauma, but are just starting to work with climate change related trauma. So really, it’s the openness and kindness of people because we have psychologists on board, we have artists, we have activists. The poet CA Conrad has just come on board. We also have musicians coming.

At the moment, I think I have about 20 partners and something like 30 different people. So yeah, it is definitely a beast to manage, I couldn’t have done it without the openness of the collaborators. So far from everybody I approached, I haven’t had a single person who said no. There were a couple of maybes and couple of tentative yeses that we are waiting on, but nobody said no, which is to me amazing.

Manley: And Kamila...

Kuc: Yeah, sorry, can I just mention one more thing? I want to also give a shout-out to two more people. Katherin Hervey and Katie Sedgwick, two LA based producers who have just started On the Border, a production company in LA. They are championing a lot of work that’s done in the field of restorative justice. So, Katherin Hervey did a lot of work with prisons in America. We just have such an amazing team of people. I think this can go in so many different interesting directions. Yeah, sorry Julian.

Manley: Yeah, you forgot that one of the actors is nature and the environment. And this is one of the important things that I’ve been learning in my work with social dreaming and indigenous knowledge and indigenous populations. The idea that nature can be given personhood. Nature can be a person and we can have a relationship with nature which is not a done to but done with relationship. I think this is one of the ways that dreams work to enable us to create something possible out of what apparently in our cognitive minds is impossible. So, you know, I’ve been very interested, for example, in the idea in New Zealand that the Whanganui River could have legal, personhood status. And that comes directly from the indigenous thinking of the Māori’s who say, “I am the river and the river is me.” And they don’t mean that as a bit of poetry. They mean that literally. And the only way we can reach that kind of literal truth is through our emotional and dream engagement with nature. So, nature becomes an actor. I really hope that we can introduce nature as an actor in the work as well.

Kuc: Completely, I think that’s a really, really great point. I think that’s why I think collaborating with different people in these diverse communities will bring us so many different points of view. So yeah, I think just being open to that and seeing what manifests. Amazing, thank you for that, Julian.

Doherty: Yeah, this is fascinating and we’re going to put some links in our show notes to some of these projects if you want to learn more or get involved. Yeah, it’s real time. All this stuff is developing in real time, in real places, in real contexts. Panu, we have to wrap up for our conversation today, but I can’t imagine that this doesn’t resonate with many things you’re seeing in your work. Do you have any thoughts to tie this up around climate emotions, coping and how this is landing for you?

Pihkala: Yeah, it’s been fascinating to listen to all that you have been sharing. For contemporary people, the big challenge is to engage with all the complexities and difficulties of the state of the world. And sometimes, creative methods can be highly helpful in that. Listening to what is under the surface, which is a category also for dreams. That’s why I think that the work that you are doing is highly important and I hope that people, including you dear listeners, find ways for that creative engagement, hopefully together with trusted others.

 Doherty: Yeah. Well, thank you, Kamila, Julian, and Panu. We’re having this real-time international conversation from the US, Finland, the UK, Scotland, and London. Listeners out there, we’re waiting for our end of the year report, but I know in the past we’ve had listeners from at least 50 countries. This small podcast goes out around the world, so it’s our own little dreaming as well. So, listeners, be well, and Panu and Kamila and Julian, you all have a good evening. Take care.

 Kuc: Thank you so much.

 Manley: Thank you.

 Pihkala: Take care.

 [music: “CC&H theme music”]

image credit | Harry Pappas

Season 4, Episode 14: On Connectedness to Nature and Community Resilience with Cindy Frantz

Thomas and Panu spoke with noted social and environmental psychology researcher Cindy Franz from Oberlin College. First, they revisited Cindy’s foundational research on people’s connectedness to nature. Then they discussed her new work on how communities adapt to climate change. Cindy noted that “adaptation begins in resilient communities” and saw her work at the local level as hopeful – “real people, attacking real problems in real communities.” She explained how she and her colleagues study the potential for feedback technology with the Oberlin Environmental Dashboard to encourage conservation behavior, connect people back to the natural world, and promote systems thinking. The message to communities was “we can deal with this, together” and we “don’t have to agree on climate science to work on weather changes.” She believed a cross-partisan approach could motivate action without triggering despair. Join us for a positive episode!

Links

• Cindy Franz 

• Past research in collaboration with Steve Mayer suggests that both individuals and the environment benefit when people feel connected to the natural world 

• Franz, Bushkin & O’Keefe (2024). Evaluating the usefulness of Protection Motivation Theory for predicting climate change mitigation behavioral intentions among a US sample of climate change deniers and acknowledgers

• Oberlin Environmental Dashboard 

• David Orr

• Past CCH episodes:

• Emotions and Climate Adaptation with Susi Moser

• Varieties of Hope with Guest Elin Kelsey