The Psychological Threat of Climate Change
About this episode
Dr. Nadine Andrews discusses the psychological impacts of climate change and the emotional challenges faced by sustainability professionals.
It’s easy to let climate change get us down. To allow political tide of anti-sustainability rhetoric to carry you away. But while it is easy to feel despondent from time to time, it is important to feel safe when expressing your emotions. To help us, Dr Nadine Andrews, an Honorary Researcher here at the Pentland Centre, and a facilitator of climate and eco psychology processes, brings her expertise to talk us through the mental and psychological toll climate change can take on us. We consider how the urgency of climate change can hit us; learn about psycho-social factors and how they affect us; talk about the values-action gap and where that fits in terms of behaviour on sustainability; look at climate change as a psychological threat, and how that manifests in each of us. Nadine tells us about her work studying sustainability professionals, and how they would suppress their beliefs in the workplace, how they revitalise themselves, and how it could all lead to burnout. Is it inevitable that the more we know about climate change, the more emotionally affected by it we will be? Nadine gives us the evidence from her work with climate assemblies, and how members felt after their…
People in this episode
Guest: Dr Nadine Andrews
Topics covered
- climate change
- psychology
- sustainability
- mental health
- eco psychology
- values-action gap
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Pentland Centre, Scottish government
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