Climate Change Conversations
For decades, climate communication has focused on raising awareness of climate change and its consequences, in the hope that such awareness, together with knowledge about sustainable alternatives, perceived social norms, and the feeling of having control over one’s actions, will encourage people to behave in more sustainable ways. Little attention has been paid to the emotional side-effects of such campaigns – fear, helplessness, grief, guilt, or anger – and how people cope with them.
More recently, psychologists like Renée Lertzman have pointed out that a lack of sustainable action may not only stem from a lack of awareness or caring, but can just as well be the consequence of caring ‘too much’. The awareness of a problem as large and pressing as climate change can be overwhelming, and lead either to paralysis and depression, or to the need to escape, for example by ignoring or even denying the scope of the problem. In this way, classic environmental campaigns may in fact be counterproductive for many people.
In the project “Climate Change Conversations”, we aim to develop a supplementary program that picks up where classic campaigning has often left off. Participants are invited to express their feelings (including fear, sadness, pity, guilt, anger, betrayal, hope, determination, etc.) and reactions (including the desire to act, helplessness, cynicism, confusion, disbelief, skepticism, etc.) to the story of climate change. Rather than arguing, the participants are encouraged to listen to and understand one another, as well as themselves.
The program does not prescribe a correct way to behave or to think, and the outcome of the conversation will be different for each participant. We believe the project to be a contribution to avoiding further rupturing of our society, as well as to a collective coming to terms with the reality of climate change in our lifetime, and a broader and more honest conversation about how to deal with it.
The project is managed by volunteers Agnes Kreil and Mélanie Surchat, both doctorate students within the TdLab. The volunteer team further includes Samuel Eberenz, former doctorate student at D-USYS, as well as D-USYS master student Annabelle Ehmann, and one external moderator. The project is funded through the D-USYS CO2 compensation fund.