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1 Facing difficult truths
… our collective equanimity in the face of the unprecedented risk posed by climate change is perhaps the greatest mystery of our age.
This was written in 2019 by Paul Hoggett in his introduction to one of the early texts Climate Psychology: On Indifference to Disaster. He goes on to say that Climate Psychology can throw some light on this mystery. He also explains how traditional psychological models – ones that assume humans are rational decision-makers based on evidence – are not complex enough to reflect real life situations. This assumption is also too individualised, which is to say that it doesn’t pay enough attention to the external conditions (past, present and even future) that influence our thoughts and actions. Traditional models therefore don’t get us very far in understanding why, faced with a mountain of evidence of climate and ecological destruction, the serious steps necessary to halt or even sufficiently mitigate climate and ecological collapse are not happening. There are numerous explanations for this evasion and inaction, which will be explored in further detail below.
Activity 1 Facing a difficult truth
First, pause and reflect on how difficult that last assertion is to properly digest: faced with a mountain of evidence of climate and ecological destruction, the serious steps necessary to halt or even sufficiently mitigate climate and ecological collapse are not happening.
To ask you to reflect on this is to give you first-hand experience in the difficulties we all face in really knowing what that means – for us and for the world. We can read it – you just have, twice. But what happened in your thought processes? What feelings did they evoke? Asking about feeling is not a separate question from asking about your thought processes. Conventional models of psychology have treated thinking and feeling as if they are separate psychological activities. Perhaps you can locate where in your body you were experiencing the effects of that sentence (traditional models have separated mind and body too, yet it is all one inner world). Using this guidance, try the same process again.
Read the following and ask yourself the same question. This time the statement comes from a more prominent source, David Attenborough. Speaking at the security council of the United Nations in 2023, he called climate change ‘the biggest threat to security that modern humans have ever faced’. He said, ‘If we continue on our current path, we will face the collapse of everything that gives us our security, … food production, access to fresh water, habitable ambient temperature and ocean food chains’.
Use these questions as prompts to help you reflect on your response to the statement:
- What thoughts did you have?
- Did any images come to mind?
- What feelings did you experience. Can you name them or are they difficult to name?
- What sensations did you feel in your body?