Season 2, Episode 8: Climate Feelings in East and West Africa with Charles Ogunbode
image credit | Oluwakemi Solaja
Season 2, Episode 8: Climate Feelings in East and West Africa with Charles Ogunbode
Panu and Thomas were joined by Charles Ogunbode, a psychology researcher at the University of Nottingham in the UK, in a dialogue about anxiety and other eco-emotions around the world. Charles shared insights from his widely reported paper “Climate anxiety, wellbeing and pro-environmental action: Correlates of negative emotional responses to climate change in 32 countries.” His study found that while climate anxiety is hurting people’s mental health around the world, from Brazil to Uganda, Portugal to the Philippines, people’s ability to speak out and take action is curtailed by lack of free speech and ability to demonstrate in many countries. Charles described his early interest in wildlife protection in Nigeria and his formative discoveries of research on conservation psychology and unconscious aspects of emotions like the melancholy that we can feel in relation to widespread destruction of the natural world. He described how his current projects create nuanced portraits of how Africans perceive the harms posed by climate change that move beyond simplistic stereotypes. Thomas, Panu and Charles reflected on unique environmental emotions and coping responses of citizens of East and West Africa that, given their shared colonial histories, feature both resignation about climate threats and also a deep resilience. Listen in and join us!
Links
Media on Charles’ research: Study: Climate anxiety is spreading all over the planet
Charles Ogunbode, et al. 2022 “Climate anxiety, wellbeing and pro-environmental action: Correlates of negative emotional responses to climate change in 32 countries.”
The MECCA project: Targeting Mental Models of Climate Change Risk to facilitate Climate Action
Charles reports he is an Associate Editor of the new journal, Global Environmental Psychology and is co-editing a special issue of the journal on “Living with Environmental Change” with Susan Clayton. (Hear from Susan in Season 1, Episode 6: “Environmental Identity and “Climate Flow”).
Transcript
Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.
Thomas Doherty: Please support the Climate Change and Happiness Podcast. See the donate page at climatechangeandhappiness.com.
[music: “CC&H theme music”]
Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now, your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.
Thomas Doherty: Well, hello, I'm Thomas Doherty.
Panu Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala.
Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. Our podcast. This is a show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about the personal side of climate change and other environmental issues. We focus on our personal emotions, our feelings, our private lives. And today, we're really happy to have a guest with us.
Charles Ogunbode: Hello, I'm Charles Ogunbode. I'm an assistant professor in psychology at the University of Nottingham, in the UK. And it's really nice to join you today on the podcast.
Doherty: And we're so happy to have Charles. Charles has been very active as a researcher, really expanding our understanding of climate emotions around the world. And I know Charles, you've been focused also on your own family and your own life. Panu, do you want to get us started today on our global conversation?
Pihkala: Definitely. And warmly welcome Charles also, on my behalf. We have met online talking about young people and climate anxiety. But it's really great to have a more relaxed and free flowing opportunity for discussions. And there [are] also links. I'm from Finland, as many listeners know. And Charles has been leading really international research where one of the countries has been Finland. Not me, but my colleagues have been involved in that.
I know, Charles, a bit about your history. That you've been in many places. So would you like to get us started by telling a bit about your personal and professional journey?
Ogunbode: Yes, thank you. Thank you, Panu. So basically, my background didn't really begin in psychology. I did a degree in wildlife management. Because when I was younger, I got interested in conservation. And I actually wanted to become a conservationist. So in the course of my degree, I went and did a whole bunch of sub practical training things and different nature reserves and national parks and things like that in Nigeria. And in the process of doing this experience, gaining activities, I soon figured out that a lot of the issues were not to do with the actual sub scientific or ecological aspects of the problem. A lot of the issues were to do with people. So it was, you know, conflicts between park rangers and local communities. You know, a lot of it was mistrust between the different parties involved. People not being very clear about what the purpose of conservation activities were, and things like that.
So I thought, okay, I'm really interested in doing something around the human side. And incidentally, just towards the end of my undergrad degree, I just happened to stumble on a book, titled Conservation Psychology. Which was written by Susan Clayton and Gene Meyers. It was given to me as a present, just random. And I read this book. And I thought this is exactly what I want to be doing. So that was the sort of start on this. I signed up to do a master's program in psychology. And carried on sort of looking into things that probe environmental behavior. And things like that. And that's basically developed into what I do now.
But the more sort of recent history of what's brought me to sort of emotions and well being and things. Which has become quite a big focus on my work now. That kind of happened a few years ago. [The] last three, four years. Maybe three years. When we had our first child, my wife had eco anxiety. Climate anxiety. We lived in Norway at the time. And I was already working on climate change at this point. And I was doing work mainly around trying to encourage people to be more concerned about climate change. Trying to get people more engaged. And basically, my outlook at the time was very much focused on risk perception models. Trying to be like, you know, if people really understood the risks posed by climate change, then they will be a motivator to act. That was, you know, in summary, my driving motivation.
But then when I saw my wife go through this phase where, you know, she was consuming lots of information about climate changes on social media and getting involved in loads of things. And she was just in a really sort of anxious state about this. And we had this child. And, you know, I think it's a combination of that particular phase in our lives. And also, you know, this big lumination thing. We just brought a child into this world. And, you know, there are all these things. And it was just really stressful. And that made me start to think a bit differently about what it means to be emotionally engaged with, you know, climate change and the ecological crisis in general. And it was around this time as well that, you know, the Friday's for Future and, you know, Extinction Rebellion. All that stuff really take[s] off. And, of course, climate anxiety as a concept kind of entered the public sort of mainstream consciousness.
So I would say, actually I really value that period in my life, because I think it made me move from a more, in hindsight, a mechanistic understanding of what emotions are in relation to the climate crisis. To where I am now where I like to think, well, one of the things I'm advocating at the minute is how we need to have this ethic of care around how we communicate about climate change. And try to motivate people. And things like that. It's not enough to just be well, let's just find a button that's going to make people engaged and act. We also have to think. We've got to have some responsibility as well. For these forces, and these reactions that we're trying to generate with people. So that's, in short.
Pihkala: Yeah, thanks so much, Charles. That's very rich. And I really value this openness with which you are describing that journey. And this already connects to a huge number of issues we have been touching on [in] this podcast. There's the so-called ecological identity or environmental identity. And very interesting to hear about this early history of yours. And I guess for many people, it goes like this. That there's a place and an ecosystem. And that's happening. And also the sort of better paradigm than “we need more information”.
Ogunbode: Yes.
Pihkala: That happened for me, also. It was really eye-opening to then start looking at another way. And the works of Renée Lertzman and Ro Randall and some others were very influential for me in that regard. So there's some points that I can also personally connect with here.
Ogunbode: And actually to add to that someone else whose work was also very critical in that transition for me was Renée Lertzman. The first sort outside of my social cognition paradigm and where I am normally. The first piece of work I read that took me. Kind of started to develop an understanding of emotions was her book, Environmental Melancholia. I think it was. That was a really good book for me to kind of get started on this new direction.
Doherty: This is great. Yeah. I'm really enjoying our conversation. And there are so many commonalities. Panu and I both have done outdoor work in the past. And my background doing outdoor therapy and river guiding. And I also considered going into wildlife conservation. And then actually had a turning point where there was study environmental studies or psychology. So I think that's common for a lot of the therapists that I've worked with. That they've had these backgrounds.
And just the listeners. I think the listeners can identify with all of this process that we're talking about. Going from the intellectual to the emotional. And psychologists in particular are very intellectual type species. And so really moving to the emotional and the depth. More depth psychology. And more the psychoanalytic archetypal directions like Renee and other thinkers. And yeah, the insight of we need to take care of people, not just push levers and buttons in a behaviorist kind of way to get people to act. But there is this compassion for us all. As I say climate hostages because we're all kind of stuck in many ways in this area.
Do we want to go into more of the international and what we're? It seems like one of the many things you're doing, Charles, is really illustrating that eco anxiety and feelings about — even to step back and say everyone has feelings about nature. And the environment. And their connections. And their identity. And you've been studying this in different countries outside of the countries that are often listed in the studies. The Finlands and the US and the UK and Canada. Would you want to talk a bit about what you've been learning in your research the last few years?
Ogunbode: Yes. That's been a really interesting journey as well. And I think one of the reasons why kind of, it's got this resonance for me. I'm very driven to bring in, you know, the voices of the people we hear less about in this area. Especially to do with emotions and things. So there are a couple of things that have kind of dovetailed in that work to make me feel really invested in it. So the first part is before I started to think about emotions, in this way, I've always had this pet peeve about the concept of climate literacy. So there's been a lot of work out there where they rank countries around the world talking about, you know, what proportion of the population understand what climate change is. So usually, it's you know, they're familiar with the term as a technical term. Do they understand that it's caused by humans? Do they understand it? Very much that's the sort of technoscientific construct of climate change. And it's like, you know, how many people around the world share that understanding.
And I've always found that to be quite problematic, because when we look at places like Africa. When we look at parts of Asia. And when we look at, you know, people don't necessarily have access to the language. And that would be English or French. Or whatever, that dominant language of science is. But it doesn't mean that they don't have an understanding of climate change. They interact with climate change on a daily basis. they're affected by climate change. Their lives are shaped by climate change. And to say these people are not aware of, they're climate illiterate. It just feels very arrogant. And I found it quite problematic.
And more importantly, than that, the proposed solution was usually oh, we need to educate people. We need to give them more information so they really understand, you know, what the scope of the issue is and things like that. And while I'm sure a lot of the motivations behind this are completely benign, I just feel if we kind of thought about it, it'd be more critical. Especially in Africa. And I can mainly speak for Africa because I'm from Nigeria. And I've had that African experience. And I can say, you know, the English language, this sort of Western understanding of science approach to science came to us through colonization. So basically, saying that you want to educate people to bring them up to speed with your western understanding is essentially saying you want to reinforce those colonial processes. You know, the part and parcel of education is not neutral. In that sense.
So I feel the climate change research community hasn't necessarily been that critical, or adequately critical around that topic. And then the way it connects with eco anxiety work is also that in a lot of the work that has been done, again, in Africa, looking at, you know, the human side of climate change, and how it's experienced where the impacts are. The questions have been very basic. You know, the emphasis has been on, particularly sort of agrarian communities. And things like that. And, you know, are people able to feed themselves? Do they have access to water? You know, that kind of thing. And not that those aren't important questions. They are important questions. But the problem is, the research never really progressed beyond that. It's almost like, you know, as long as they're alive, it's fine. And none of the other things that are necessary to have a full meaningful life. Dignified life. Ever seems to be considered.
So that was why when the eco anxiety started to pick up as well, I thought, well, why are we not seeing anything really, outside of, you know, North America and Western Europe about this. Again, it's that same thing about how, you know, it's really important here. We have all these complex emotions. And all the things that are important, but other people around the world, we don't really bother to ask how they're feeling. So I thought that was something that needed to be set right. So that's been a big motivation to do the work that I've been involved in over the last couple of years. Trying to collect data on this from all over the world. And that work has been really rewarding because I then kind of connect it to other people. And it's become something even more than what I started out thinking about initially.
So initially, it was just about, look, we need to get a sense or get a measure of how people feel about climate change. It's not just about, you know, what they understand. Just how do they feel, at whatever level of understanding they are. Because I think emotions actually can tell us a lot about what people think. Beyond just asking someone, you know, how do you understand climate change? What does it mean to you, etc. I think we're quicker to be able to get a sense of how we feel about something before we're actually able to put it together cognitively to say, this is my attitude. And this is my belief. Or whatever. We just have that. You know, like intuition and things like that. I thought, you know, this is such a good way to bypass the poor climate literacy thing and just focus on how people feel.
Yes, so that's kind of been a big part of it. And then what's kind of also developed out of it more recently, that's become also quite exciting for me is, of course, we then had the projects. Invited loads of people. And work together. Gathered all this data. But then it goes thinking about the way we actually do the research. So it's not just about the questions we're asking and what issues we're tackling. But it's also, how did we get here? You know, we started with a very small group. It was myself and a bunch of colleagues from many European countries who started up the project. Essentially we came to it with an understanding of what climate anxiety was and invited people to help us figure out if that applied in a whole range of countries.
We never really asked our collaborators, you know, what's it like, from your side? You know, how do you think we should measure this? Does this even make sense to you? You know, so we've now more recently been spending a bit more time just kind of reflecting on the process. And also thinking about how potentially this could not only inform what's happening around climate, emotions research, but also become a template for psychological research on sustainability and climate change in general. To really, you know, properly embrace this global outlook and understanding. This idea is one way of seeing the world. One, society. One group is not more important than another one where we have a collective problem. And we need all, you know, perspectives. All hands on deck, basically, to make sense of it and navigate our way out of it.
Pihkala: Yeah, thanks for sharing all that. And I think there's hugely important things related to the colonial history. And how it links with climate science. And giving [an] emphasis on the lived experience of people. Often in the complexity. And also listening to other kinds of information than just, you know, the rational, cognitive, put into word type of thing. And sometimes folks in environmental education have also got very interesting results when they ask kids to make drawings, for example. And then people are very surprised at what actually comes out of that. Have you gotten feedback, for example, from Nigeria, or other countries?
Ogunbode: Yes. So, there's some work, which. We've gathered all this data. And we're going through it now. So the project I was involved in, which looks at people's understanding of climate change in eastern West Africa. So the West African side of the project focuses on Lagos, in Nigeria. It's a coastal city. It's the biggest economic center in the city. And it's got a very interesting sort of dynamic around climate change, because the government had invested a lot of money in climate change adaptation because essentially, the city is threatened by rising sea levels. And things like that. But in the process of delivering these climate adaptation projects, there's also been a lot of forced evacuations of some of the traditional communities that lived on the coast. And they're essentially making this development that also doubles as luxury housing for rich residents. So it's quite a complicated scenario there. So it's been really interesting to get all the data in from there. Talking to people in Lagos about their feelings about climate change. And what they understand climate change to be. What kinds of actions they're taking, etc. And we're just working our way through that data right now.
And then in East Africa, we also are working with communities in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Countries on the what's called on the coast of Lake Victoria Who sp depend on the lake for fishing. And we're talking to them about their experiences of climate change as well. And their feelings about it. How it impacts them, etc. And basically, when we started this project, at its core, it's a natural sciences project. So we've got this sort of modeler. We're doing all kinds of hydrological modeling in Lake Victoria to see what the scientific objective, you know, climate change trends are there. Same as with Lagos as well. And then the idea of the project was for our social sciences to come in. So there's myself and Caroline Van Den Berg, who is also an environmental psychologist at Utrecht. And colleagues in the University of Bergen as well. So a bunch of psychologists anyway constitute the social science side of the project. And we're supposed to come in basically and speak to people. Get their impression of what's going on with climate change. And then essentially bring this data to the objective natural sciences data. And see the degree to which there is agreement or not, in what people think compared with the measurements that have been taken by the scientists.
But it's been a really good opportunity, as I said, to kind of get a feel for how people think about it. And one of the interesting things actually I've been doing, which was how that photo came about. As the slide where I misspelled your name Panu. It was basically me applying your taxonomy of climate emotions to the reports that we got from people in Nigeria to see how much of those emotions you identified in your paper represented in the spontaneous accounts that people give. So all we've asked them is, how do you feel about climate change? That's it. There's no pre question. There's nothing. It's just their spontaneous reactions. And it's been really interesting to see what kinds of things we will come up with. It's raised a lot of questions actually about not just the emotions that people feel, but also the language that's available to them to describe the emotions that they have.
So it's been really interesting. So a lot of people the dominant emotion, strangely, seem to be indifferent. So it's been really interesting to try to delve into what that means. Because normally, when we think about indifference in the Western context, it's, you know, I think you described it actually, it is categorized in among these of hostile emotions. It's a rejection. It's, you know, of whatever the issue is. Whereas in Nigeria, it seems to be something closer to resignation. Where it's not coming from a place of not caring. But it's coming from a place of either, well, they're just so many other things. So many other pressing concerns. Or this just seems to be beyond my ability to do anything. So I'm just not. I'm not even going to be worried about it. Because that takes too much energy, you know. So that's a big one. And then in East Africa, the dominant feeling is sadness. You know, when you ask people they just say, oh, I'm really sad this is happening. I'm really sad about what the implications are going to be. I'm really sad because, you know, in the future we'll have less food. Or children will be, you know, negatively affected, etc. And, again, it's a negative emotion, but it's not one that really speaks of activation or action, if you know what I mean.
So yeah, it's really interesting, kind of looking through that data. And the plan is to try to feed it back to some of the local organizations working in these areas. And trying to think well, how can we, you know, what do we do to kind of support people and make sure that, you know, these feelings get channeled into some kind of action that will be beneficial for, you know, sort of just resolving the issues. The challenges that people are facing. Because to be realistic, for a lot of these people, they genuinely do not have a lot of means to have an impact. You know, so we're talking about people who are kind of disenfranchised as far as political systems are concerned. They're, you know, relative to someone like me or you, they're quite far away from the centers of power. If you know what I mean. They're not in a position to put pressure on leaders to do anything like that. So yeah, it's a very interesting scenario, where it's been really informative. Really helpful to be able to learn about it. And just bring that into, you know, my understanding. And my colleagues' understanding of just the global landscape of, you know, climate change. the human experience of climate change. Anyway.
Pihkala: That's very interesting. Just some brief comments from me. And then I'll drop the ball to Thomas. This issue of different words for emotions and feelings in different languages and cultures, is something me and Thomas have been very interested about. And, of course, the Finnish language plays a big role in that for me. And there's some things we have a word for, in affective phenomena in Finnish that don't exist in English. And the other way around. And what you are saying about indifference, for example, is highly interesting. Because I see many variations in sort of, kind of calm acceptance, totally calm. And it's difficult to find a word. But if you just can't do anything about it [the climate crisis], then you may have in a way engaged with it, but then just made the estimation that, you know, it's totally beyond me.
Ogunbode: Yeah.
Pihkala: That's something that I wonder if some language has a good word for that, which would bring the connotation instantly.
Ogunbode: Yeah.
Pihkala: What's on your mind, Thomas, when listening to this very rich conversation?
Doherty: Oh, yeah, I'm really, you know, to bring the listeners in particularly, I'm thinking of you listeners in the US. You know, I've been looking at the map just to orient myself. And I do recommend people pull out a map and just, you know, locate Lagos and Lake Victoria. And just to get a sense of the part of the world near the equator that we're talking about. And, you know, it's such a different context with colonialism, as you say. Just the political situation and cultures in Africa.
It makes sense once we look at this, why the findings would be that, you know, the sense of being able to take action. You know, it is more prominent in European countries and US countries. You know, wealthier countries. There's a lot I mean, for us, and for the listeners thinking about our emotions. So this idea of indifference and sadness. Which I think people feel in the US, too. I think actually parts of the US people feel very much similar. That's partly why we have political issues in the US. People are very much disenfranchised. We have a very unequal country. And so when we think about this calm acceptance, I wonder, is it, to get more nuanced again about the feelings, is it fatalism? Or is it also a kind of resilience? Right? So is it sort of like, we will endure. That's just, not having ever been to Africa, my sense of a lot of African cultures is there as a sense of resilience in the sense of endurance. This sense of humor. You know, the sense of teaching stories and things like that.
So I wonder about fatalism versus resilience. So that's one direction to go. And then just to acknowledge, and Charles, you might have thoughts about this too. You know, I feel like in places like the US and Finland, there is more of the sense of guilt and shame. As someone privileged. Whereas there's, probably in Africa, people feel guilty and shameful of their privilege. But the privileges are different.
Ogunbode: Yeah.
Doherty: Less evenly distributed through the countries. But I don't think people in Africa are immune to shame and guilt either. So just staying a little more with all these nuanced feelings would be interesting.
Ogunbode: Yeah. No, absolutely. I think those emotions are certainly relevant in that context, as well. And there was one person who explicitly used the term guilt. And they were talking about it in terms of. I mean, presently there's still a lot of people who don't quite realize that climate change is something that's driven by processes beyond their local context. So a lot of people would say, oh, it's because of the trees that are cut down, you know, somewhere down the road. Or it's because of those factories or some. So there's that sense of local responsibility. And there is some guilt around people. So most people wouldn't necessarily use the word guilt. There was that one person who did. But from the description of where they think these problems have come from, there is a sense of, we're doing a disservice to future generations and our kids and things like that.
So those emotions are perfectly relevant in that context. And that's part of the reason why I think there's emphasis on the technical understanding of climate change. And who has it? And who doesn't. It's the wrong direction to be looking at. Because the people arrive at the same kinds of outcomes. And have the same kinds of reactions. And they make logical judgments. And it's not so much the specific kinds of information that they're working with that really matter in that process. But it's how they come to make those judgments. How those feelings come to arise. And what the consequences of those feelings are. Those are the sorts of things that I think are probably more important. And so I think, to a large extent, there's sorts of drives to make restitution or restoration and things like that. I think they are present as well.
And these are the sorts of things that I'm really hoping that the more we can generate this kind of information. And get them in the hands of, you know, active campaigners and educators in this context, then they can really begin to channel those drives into more constructive channels. Because the other thing I find a bit frustrating sometimes is I've really appreciated the emergence of a focus on sub-climate justice, for example. Basically justice framings of the climate discourse. But I also see that within that, our role as African or people in the Global South in general, is to be the soft victim of the problem. And I think it's quite disempowering, in a way. And so I think we also need to not just, you know, while we're recognizing and engaging the structural issues, we also need to not lose sight of self worth. And, you know, people's individual and collective agency to make change within those systems as well
Pihkala: Yeah, that sounds like a hugely important point both that you're sharing. And I don't know how this is for you, because you are known now in many places as an eco-anxiety researcher. Do people come to you and ask how we should cope with eco-anxiety? And if they did, what would you say?
Ogunbode: I always refer them to people who I know are much more qualified than myself. So I've been really lucky to. For a while I was quite actively engaged with the Climate Psychology Alliance in the UK. Unfortunately, because I just work fresh and stuff going on, family life hasn't really been able to keep me involved as much as I would like. But they've been brilliant. And usually I just say, get in touch with the CPA. Okay, there's lots of really great people there.
Doherty: Yeah. I mean listeners should know that there's so many people working on all these issues all around the world. Charles, I mean, that people in every country you've done that are understanding climate change in their own way and working. And so people don't understand that piece. But then there is a lot, what I call the, you know, the climate elephant or the blind man and the elephant parable. Where everybody has different pieces of climate. And I feel for you, Charles being the human feelings researcher in a room full of climate adaptation people that are all focused on, you know, hydrology. Because human feelings are still disenfranchised in the climate discourse. You know, the emotions are less present in all the reports. And so there is this intellectual bias. And so that stuff.
But then even among the people that cares, there's like, well, who can help? Well, you can help, you know. And so the therapists are trying to come in, but then they feel like they don't understand hydrology. And they don't understand the climate. So it is a work in progress for all of us. So if people feel like an impostor, or they don't know enough, that's just quite normal for anyone engaging in this area. Yeah, we have time for maybe one more point. We can go a little over our time because it's such a rich discussion. Well how do we want to close off our discussion? Charles, is there something else that you want to bring in or that we didn't talk about? Or directions for the future?
Pihkala: Yeah. Thanks once more for dwelling on that. And as you sort of hinted before, that also helps the researchers. So that's my experience, both personally and with my colleagues. So that's the good side of it. And it's advancing a paradigm change, I think, I think you've been in many ways involved in this. And that's something for the listeners also. So no matter where you are, everybody can do something for this Great Turning. That would be Joanna Macy's word for it and other terms. So just being open to these issues, that's already a great step. So not going into that “I can't take this I want to stay away all the time”. [Instead:] “I want to stay.” Very grateful, Charles that you found the time to come and discuss. I've learned a lot today. And it's been a great pleasure.
Ogunbode: Yeah. Well, I mean, this is very much to do with what's been on my mind recently. But I think I'm gonna stay with this for a while, because I think there is a lot of value to working on this. And it ties into what you were saying just now about, you know, there. Suddenly, among psychology, there's a growing proportion of people who are really beginning to take emotions more seriously. Really, I've been really glad, since climate anxiety came around. You know, there are lots of ways we can critique the concept. And there are lots of, you know, issues with it. But it's done one thing, which I think is really important, which has given us this term to talk about emotions that most people can relate to. They know what you're talking about, when you say climate anxiety. They have some sense of it. So we can now talk about that. And what it means. And also it's helped us move away from why people are not worried enough. If only they were worried, then maybe we'll see more action. It's helped us move away from that to a more nuanced understanding of emotions. And that's really important.
And the other half of the equation that now needs to happen is how we then work together to really move this forward. And this is where it connects to what you were saying, Thomas, about, you've got a therapist. You've got people like myself who are just sort of like, you know, psychology researchers and things like that. And I think sometimes it's easy to lose sight of the greater goal. Just because of the incentives within academia. And how it works. And things like that. And it's almost like, you know, you're solving competition, one another, and things like that. But I think it's a really important sort of challenge for all of us to be able to in whatever way, whatever skills we've got on whatever, you know, capacities, we've got to read to, you know, keep in focus that all of these different things complement one another. You know, I've been in some meetings with other psychologists where there'll be some really searing critiques of, I don't know, more some like cognition oriented psychology. And I've been in meetings, I feel like, oh, well, I don't understand this psychosocial stuff or. You know, it very quickly descends into the sort of disciplinary tensions.
And I just don't think we can really afford that right now. I think we need to maybe put in a bit more effort in getting the different disciplines within psychology to kind of speak with one another and figure out how to kind of work together to achieve the bigger goals. You know, there's been a lot of work by people I really respect. You know, over the last few years. Lots of commentaries. Lots of opinion pieces. Lots of things trying to forge this vision for psychology around emotions research. And it would be great to see more work like that. More people coming together and trying to really push, you know, self drive that collective effort forward. Thank you so much for inviting me. I do feel like I'm in the company of really great people, because I've read so much. I read your work. I read Thomas's work from very early on in my PhD. So your papers with Susan sort of lay out, you know, I love those things. You know, actually do research on them and things. So I really appreciate it. It's great to actually be talking to you in person. And Panu, obviously, you've done tons of stuff. I can only aspire to, you know. So it's really good. So I hope that we will, you know, be able to carry on this conversation in another space at some point in the future.
Doherty: Yeah, me too. And Charles, thanks for carrying the fire and moving it forward and bringing it more worldwide attention. The idea of the ethic of care, I think, is a great takeaway. You know, responsibility for our emotions. And also for holding other people's emotions, even if they're different. Even if they're different. Underlying some of these academics, you know, debates are people's different emotions, too. And so like, you know, really caring for different kinds of climate emotions than our own is good for all of us. Well, thank you. And to the listeners, thanks for joining us again. If you like our content, please think about supporting our podcast. We're a self funded volunteer effort. You can find us at climatechangeandhappiness.com, or on our Patreon page. And otherwise, Panu and Charles, you have a good evening. And I'm going to get on with the rest of my rainy day here in Oregon.
Ogunbode: Have a nice day, Thomas. Thank you, take care, Panu.
Doherty: Take care.
Pihkala: Take Thomas, Charles and all the listeners.
Doherty: The Climate Change and Happiness Podcast is a self-funded, volunteer effort. Please support us so we can keep bringing you messages of coping and thriving. See the donate page at climatechangeandhappiness.com.
