Fear grief and lack of talk on climate change

The answer to the question posed by Canadian climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe “What's the big deal about a few degrees anyway?”

includes exploration of our possible fear and denial even as expert scientists, economists, and psychologists present their study of the effect of the climate emergency on people and our planet.

the effect of the climate emergency on people and our planet1

Annette Dubreuil explores the question of why we stop talking about climate change.

 This “spiral of silence” is itself a big problem: “People concerned about the climate avoid voicing their worry because they rarely hear others discussing the topic, and thus the spiral continues.” But collective silence is dangerous, especially for a problem as large and urgent as climate change. How do we pull out of this spiral? According to Hayhoe, we have to talk about it. But that can be hard to do. Humans are social creatures. Belonging is a fundamental and universal human need, and as a result, we often choose to conform to our group. That’s why our friends and family have far more influence on our view than do experts. Research suggests that the silencing effect is most powerful when talking to family, friends, or neighbours about obtrusive issues. So, the need for belonging makes overcoming the spiral of silence with friends and family even harder. But in fact, we have much more common ground on climate change than expected: in a research project using dialogue between people of opposing views, participants agreed on key points, and in each case there was at least one topic where the two took positions contrary to what they predicted of the other.Even when we do talk about climate change, our instinct on what to talk about is typically unhelpful. Rather than starting with the science and facts as we’re apt to do, Hayhoe suggests that we find that common ground by looking for shared values. For example, maybe you’re both parents, or maybe you both have the same hobby. Second, don’t use fear, but rather rational hope. Talk about solutions that are “practical, viable, accessible and attractive”.2

Katherine Hayhoe recently gave a TED talk titled “The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it.”

In it, she cites the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which finds that two-thirds of Americans never talk about climate change even though 70% believe it is a real problem.

Jennifer A Dlouhy comments that an all-star lineup of economists, from Alan Greenspan to Paul Volcker, is endorsing a plan to combat climate change

Common ground on Climate

by slapping a tax on greenhouse gas emissions and then distributing the revenue to American households.

All living former Federal Reserve chairs, several Nobel Prize winners and previous leaders of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers have signed on to a statement asserting that a robust, gradually rising carbon tax is “the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary.”
“A carbon tax will send a powerful price signal that harnesses the invisible hand of the marketplace to steer economic actors towards a low-carbon future,” the 45 economists say in the opinion piece, published by the Wall Street Journal late Wednesday.3 

Olivia Goldhill asks if therapists have a duty to confront climate change denial. The research of Dr. Renee Lertzman, an expert in the psychosocial aspects of climate change communications has inspired a video. There are various psychoanalytical theories as to why we might be psychologically resistant to addressing climate change, notes philosopher and psychoanalyst Donna Orange, an adjunct professor at New York University. Social scientist Renee Lertzman, who works on the psychology of environmental communications, believes that people are suffering from “environmental melancholia.”

Freud believed that melancholia reflected a sense of loss that is not fully conscious and so cannot be fully mourned, and Lertzman argues this state describes our response to climate change. That many are aware of the effects of climate change but do little about it suggests dissociation, the Freudian concept explaining how we bury traumatic memories in the unconscious, and regression, Freud’s explanation for why people show childlike rather than adult behavior as a defense mechanism for coping with stress, argues Orange.4 

Sara E. Gorman, PhD, MPH, a public health specialist working on mental health and Jack M. Gorman, MD, former Professor and Chair of Psychiatry and Professor of Neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, faculty of Columbia University's Department of Psychiatry for 25 years, find there are at least two psychological reasons that encouraging people to adopt climate protection activities in their daily lives may help promote action on the larger scale.

First, denial is a response to something we fear, and we know from animal and human studies that fear induces freezing and passivity. But studies also demonstrate that giving a fearful animal or human a task that even symbolically addresses what is feared can minimize freezing and promote action. Thus, recommending tasks that we can perform in our daily lives may help us overcome our feeling that mitigating climate change is a hopeless enterprise and motivate us join the voices insisting on ending burning fossil fuels.
Second, these quotidian activities can be the basis for the formation of committees and communities that bring people together with the common goal of addressing climate change. Being part of a group with a common goal may help people overcome denial and have the courage to face the realities of climate change, however grim they may be. It may be easier and more effective for groups of people to demand that countries impose carbon taxes and spend heavily on sustainable energy than it is for individuals.5 

Being frozen in fear and presenting symptoms of grief

Climate stages of grief

at our loss are delaying the relief we will find in beginning to seek common ground with others as we speak about our concerns.

References

1	(n.d.). Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe - YouTube. Retrieved February 22, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi6RkdaEqgRVKi3AzidF4ow
2	(n.d.). Annette Dubreuil, Author at Canada's Ecofiscal Commission. Retrieved September 7, 2019, from https://ecofiscal.ca/author/adubreuil/
3	(2019, January 16). From Greenspan to Yellen, Economic Brain Trust Backs .... Retrieved September 7, 2019, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-17/from-greenspan-to-yellen-economic-brain-trust-backs-carbon-tax
4	(2019, February 21). Do therapists have a duty to confront climate change denial. Retrieved September 7, 2019, from https://qz.com/1554808/fighting-climate-change-with-psychoanalysis/
5	(2019, January 12). Climate Change Denial | Psychology Today. Retrieved September 7, 2019, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/denying-the-grave/201901/climate-change-denial

Psychology to shake our carbon-emitting habits

Anthony A. Davis writes about 37 different reasons why it is so hard to change our climate change habits. University of Victoria psychology professor Robert Gifford calls the barriers “dragons”.

Source: https://www.dragonsofinaction.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/doi_3dragon_header.png

They fall into seven broad categories: limited cognition, ideologies, comparison with others, sunk costs, discredence, perceived risks and limited behaviour. When he published a 2011 article in American Psychologist that identified the first 29 of these dragons, the article went viral and became the publication’s most-read piece in its history.1

Mistrust dragon

Seth Wynes, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of geography at the University of British Columbia, found evidence of a “climate mitigation gap,” where education and government recommendations often miss the most effective actions Canadians and others can take.

For instance, he says, few governments say the most effective ways to reduce carbon footprints include having one less child, ceasing air travel, living car-free and eating a plant-based diet. Instead, much of the educational and government literature focuses on less effective measures, such as hanging clothes out to dry, or installing more efficient LED lighting in homes.
The reason for that, Wynes suggests, is a “foot-in-the-door” strategy. “Communicators emphasize easy-to-perform actions that get people started on environmental lifestyles, and hope that people adopt more important actions later. Unfortunately, with the scale of the climate problem, we don’t have time to focus on small changes anymore.”2 

Tokenism dragon

One troubling finding in Wynes’s research is how misinformed people are when they engage in what psychologists call “moral licensing.” “We do this with dieting,” says Wynes, explaining the term. “We say, ‘I went for a jog, now I can eat cake.'' Some people do this with green behaviours: ‘I have recycled for a year, so therefore I can go on a vacation to Cuba.’ ”

References

1	(n.d.). The Dragons of Inaction – Diagnosing and Slaying the Barriers to .... Retrieved July 24, 2019, from https://www.dragonsofinaction.com/
2	(2019, July 22). Why we can't shake our carbon-emitting habits, even as the world burns. Retrieved July 24, 2019, from https://www.macleans.ca/society/health/why-we-cant-shake-our-carbon-emitting-habits-even-as-the-world-burns/

Turn Laudato Si into action

The Encyclical of Pope Francis “Laudato Si” Care of Our Common Home lays the foundation for action to convert the people of earth to renew our care and concern for the planet. This article presents the some of the psychology of climate change communication. Some contributors share efforts to correct approaches that reinforce human sovereignty and the resulting environmental degradation. Change is proposed in a subjective, inductive, and experiential way without doing damage to the content of the encyclical. We seek common ground in care of the people and living creatures of the planet and our Christian responsibility to care for the poor.

Water challenges on the Eastern Shore

Consider the challenge that decades of climate change discussion hasn't turned into decisive action. For example, water is a fundamental human right but water scarcity around the world is causing severe problems. The questions that need to be asked when assessing environmental impact on people of economic development are important in our own province.

British author and carbon pricing expert, George Marshall, explains the psychology of climate change communication and describes the work he's done in Canada on this front - to bridge the political divides.

Common Ground?

He argues that once we understand what excites, threatens, and motivates us, we can rethink and re-imagine climate change, for it is not an impossible problem. Rather, it is one we can halt if we can make it our common purpose and common ground.

The “Things Not Seen Podcast” features some Franciscan wisdom for a planet in peril in a discussion with  Fr. Dan Horan, OFM, about his new book, “All God's Creatures: A Theology of Creation”

(Click on centre of slide)

The predominant “stewardship model” of creation is the result of an intentional effort to correct approaches that reinforce human sovereignty and the resulting environmental degradation.

Stewards of creation

However, as All God’s Creatures argues, the stewardship model actually does not offer a correction but rather reinscribes many of the very same pitfalls. After close analysis of the stewardship model, this book identifies scriptural, theological, and philosophical sources to support the adoption of a “community of creation” paradigm.

A "community of creation"

Father Richard Hogan writes that both Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas lived and taught in a culture which might be described as objective, deductive, and principled.

Both Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas lived and taught in a culture which might be described as objective, deductive, and principled. The modern world is primarily subjective, inductive, and experiential.  Objective means that something is real, i.e., it is true, regardless of whether or not I know it to be true. For example, if a blind man is outside, but cannot see the trees, the trees are still there. Even though he does not perceive them, the trees are truly there. The existence of the trees does not depend on whether the blind man perceives them or not.  Objective reality exists independent of one’s perception. The subjective view of reality claims that only that which I perceive to be real is actually real. Generally, the subjective view of reality is not applied to trees and physical objects. However, it is applied to non-physical realities, e.g., truths about the existence of God, truths about morality. The subjective view of reality is clearly captured by the phrase, “That may be true for you, but not for me!”  In other words, what is true depends on what I believe or accept, or better phrased, on what I perceive. In the medieval world, such a claim would be utter nonsense. In fact, to most medieval academics, the truths of the faith, both dogmatic and moral truths, were more real than physical objects. The medieval world was objective. We are subjective.

Through the use of a philosophical movement called phenomenology, John Paul II has been able (in particular with the Theology of the Body) to present the content of Christ’s Revelation in a subjective, inductive, and experiential way without doing damage to its content.

Medieval world	Modern world
objective	subjective
deductive	inductive
principled	experiential
Augustine and Plato; Aquinas and Aristotle	Phenomenology of John Paul II

Table 1 Compare ancient and modern presentation

Katherine Hayhoe, as part of the Global Weirding Series on YouTube, discusses the topic “The Bible doesn’t talk about climate change, right?” in which she looks at the problem from the point of view of Evangelical Christians and finds common ground in care of the people and living creatures of the planet and our Christian responsibility to care for the poor.

Bill McKibben discusses why decades of climate change discussion hasn't turned into decisive action.

Katharine Hayhoe outlines her "elevator pitch", on how climate is changing and why it matters. She advises don’t start with the science.

Start with the values. I care about X. For example “We don’t have a future without water”.

WATER – FOR ALL AND EVERYONE

The Water Connection

Water is a fundamental human right but water scarcity around the world is causing severe problems and human suffering that are likely to worsen in the future, warns Caritas Internationalis.

“All people have a right to safe drinking water…This is a problem that affects everyone and is a source of great suffering in our common home.” – Pope Francis, Laudato Si’

Laudato Si Chapter 6

Displaced by water that was not safe to drink

Caritas’ global 2-year campaign on migration “Share the Journey” promotes Pope Francis’ “culture of encounter”, aiming to build stronger communities. Caritas is mobilizing its organisations in over 160 countries to look at the causes of migration, bust myths about migrants and to bring migrants and communities closer together.

In Laudato Si, Pope Francis declares the questions that need to be asked when assessing environmental impact on people of economic development.

Questions in Economic development

185. In any discussion about a proposed venture, a number of questions need to be asked in order to discern whether or not it will contribute to genuine integral development. What will it accomplish? Why? Where? When? How? For whom? What are the risks? What are the costs? Who will pay those costs and how? In this discernment, some questions must have higher priority. For example, we know that water is a scarce and indispensable resource and a fundamental right which conditions the exercise of other human rights. This indisputable fact overrides any other assessment of environmental impact on a region.

https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Aerial-Boat-Harbour2_NS-Government-credit.jpg

For 50 years the Boat Harbour NS residents witnessed the transformation of Boat Harbour from a once pristine tidal estuary, so frequented by the Mi’kmaq of Pictou Landing that they referred to it as “the other room,” into a brown, frothy, toxic soup containing some of the world’s most dangerous chemicals: carcinogens such as dioxins and furans and heavy metals such as mercury, zinc, cadmium and chromium.

Action to address the climate change, water, and loss of biodiversity concerns expressed in “Laudato Si” needs to be focused on responding to the values of people that are threatened as the planet changes and people are displaced from their homes.

References

(2018, November 9). CBC Listen | Front Burner | Bridging the climate change divide - CBC.ca. Retrieved November 14, 2018, from https://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/front-burner/episode/15629854

(2018, November 19). Franciscan wisdom for a planet in peril: Fr. Dan Horan, OFM .... Retrieved November 20, 2018, from http://www.thingsnotseenradio.com/shows/1833-horan
(n.d.). An Introduction to John Paul II's Theology of the Body - NFP Outreach. Retrieved November 13, 2018, from https://www.nfpoutreach.org/47

(2017, January 4). The Bible doesn't talk about climate change, right? - YouTube. Retrieved November 21, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpjL_otLq6Y
(2010, December 3). A life in writing: Bill McKibben | Books | The Guardian. Retrieved November 27, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/dec/06/bill-mckibben-interview
(2018, March 21). Water – for all and everyone - Caritas Internationalis. Retrieved November 25, 2018, from https://www.caritas.org/2018/03/sharing-water/
(2015, May 24). Laudato si' (24 May 2015) - Vaticano. Retrieved November 21, 2018, from http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html
(2017, November 22). Dirty Dealing - Halifax Examiner. Retrieved November 27, 2018, from https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/province-house/dirty-dealing/

Non collaboration may be a pattern

Teachers, employers, advertisers, and others often deal with the psychological phenomena that people are creatures of habit. Often our present actions are a reliable predictor of our future actions.

Source: https://i.cbc.ca/1.4099945.1493927308!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_620/liberal-leader-stephen-mcneil.jpg

The CBC has reported:

McNeil acknowledges doctors weren't consulted enough in health-care overhaul.

While much of that change has been well received, McNeil said it's been made clear to him by doctors and the organization that represents them — Doctors Nova Scotia — they've felt left out of the overhaul process.
"I've made it clear that on a go-forward basis that we would continue to make sure that they're a big part of the decision-making process."

It appears that Premier McNeil bravely asserts that he is not a creature of habit. The future decision making process will include the doctors.

I fear that soon we might have a news story on education reform that reads:

While much of that change has been well received, McNeil said it's been made clear to him by teachers and the organization that represents them — NSTU— they've felt left out of the overhaul process.

Connections can be shown between the Glaze Report and the ideology of neo-liberal education. In the neo-liberal business model of education there are winners and losers as competition for resources is seen as a strength of this economic philosophy.

Fig 1. NEA Quality Education vs Neo-Liberal Education

Who are the winners when doctors are left out of making changes in the healthcare system and teachers are ignored when making reforms of the education system?

Unfortunately, the application of neo-liberal economics has coincided with the poor getting poorer while the rich have gotten richer. The winners in application of neo-liberal business models to health and education are those who can afford private health services and private schools. Savvy politicians learn after decades in politics that you should hang with the winners.

Fig 2. The beneficiaries of the business model

References

(2017, May 8). McNeil acknowledges doctors weren't consulted enough in health .... Retrieved February 19, 2018, from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/stephen-mcneil-doctors-recruitment-shortage-cape-breton-1.4104829

Challenge to the Wisdom of Surrender and Humility