Week 2: Engaging with the climate and ecological crisis: indifference, distress and beyond

Introduction

This week you will begin by asking why people and society still seem not to be facing the unprecedented risk of climate change. You will explore the world of feelings that underpin thought through terms like eco-anxiety and eco-distress and find out about research into young people’s feelings. You will learn to distinguish these from approaches that would treat them as a weakness of individual psychology rather than recognising them as a healthy – if upsetting – response to the reality of the climate threat. You are offered the opportunity to use a scale to reflect on how distressed you are. The story of doomism is told, whose political origins in the misinformation activities of fossil fuel interests demonstrates the bigger social pressures that can woo us all into avoiding the difficult truths about climate and ecological destruction.

This week you will:

• learn about the psychological difficulties of facing the climate and ecological crisis
• be introduced to a depth psychology approach to Climate Psychology
• hear a personal perspective of living with climate change
• learn about eco-anxiety and climate distress as a healthy response
• learn about doomism.