image credit | Joanne Francis

Season 4, Episode 13: Coping When Disaster Finds Your Home with Gale Sinatra and Renee Lertzman

Thomas and Panu met with USC climate researcher Gale Sinatra and climate psychologist Renee Lertzman and spoke about how to cope and help with recent Los Angeles wild fires—at the disaster site and from a distance. The need was made real in the context of Gale’s sudden loss of her home to the recent Eaton fire and her unfolding experience as a climate refugee. 

• Gale described in clear terms how climate change is not just an individual disaster but also a community disaster. Experiencing a disaster can exceed our capacity to process in different times and different ways. Understanding what to say and do for victims is crucial for community support.

• Renee observed how the global nature of climate grief affects everyone, not just those directly impacted, and that denialism can manifest in various ways, complicating the response to disasters and people’s ability to orient and take action.  

• Panu noted the challenge of “facing difficult truths” regarding climate breakdown, and dealing with ambivalent feelings disasters arouse in us (such as competing urges to get more information and to avoid troubling feelings, and, to provide help, while feeling inadequate to do so). 

• Thomas described the process of “emotional-orienting” (calibrating your feeling response to the disaster, appreciating the location and needs of the victims and survivors, and being aware of how similar experiences you may have had can be stirred up by the disaster). He also explained the differences between “emotional empathy” and “action empathy” when supporting those affected by disasters and traumatic events.

Gale Sinatra:

• Gale Sinatra Website

• The Golden Hour (interview with Gale): 'You may think you're safe, but you are not' - The climate education scholar whose house burned down

• Science Denial: Why it Happens and what to Do about it

Renee Lertzman:

• Renee Lertman Website

• Project Inside out 

• Environmental Melancholia: Psychoanalytic dimensions of engagement

• Myth of Apathy essay