Archive for the ‘climate change’ Category
March 9, 2010
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Some people have been debating whether or not scientists should become climate change activists or if they should stick to the data. The concern is that the general population seems less worried about environmental issues. Given our culture’s typical reliance on external solutions to problems, it doesn’t surprise me that journalists and pundits are looking to Obama, scientists, activists, politicians and economists to motivate change. As someone who helps people transform less than optimal behavioral problems into opportunities for accomplishment, lets begin with this fact: People don’t always act in their own best interest. Usually, what most motivates people to behave in a manner that affirms self and others is direct emotional enlivenment that connects to an inner conviction or memory. Let me provide an example from my work to illustrate how it might be possible to get people interested in climate change. (more…)
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Tags:climate change, ecoloical unconscious, environment, ground up environmental change, human relationship to nature, human relationships, mind nature relationship, personal environmentalism, pschological aspects of climate change
Posted in climate change, ecopsychcology, human interaction, personal environmentalism, relationships, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
March 2, 2010
An adolescent with whom I work discussed the complexity of privilege. “My parents paid just over $12,000.00 for our family to go on a 5-day wilderness backpacking trip, with a service that provides the gear, the food, a plane to transport you there and a guide. I loved it and it changed me, like any amazing experience your parents buy for you. But the fact that it didn’t come from within me made it seem like another thing that someone gave me. Maybe it would have felt less strange if having that relationship to the wilderness wasn’t something only wealthy people could buy, but just a more natural and expected part of how kids are raised.”
His comment reminded me of a question: how will people who have been raised in a time of excess choose to live sustainable lives ? Evan Thomas said in this week’s Newsweek, “The problem is not the system. It’s us – our ‘got mine’ culture of entitlement.” I know the people of whom he writes. They are not of any particular subculture but rather inhabit every landscape from poverty to opulence with a unfamiliarity with limits and boundaries of any kind, as well as personal needs that seem small in comparison to what the planet has to offer.
And, Al Gore is asking these people to be the opposite of who they are in order to save the planet. How does the culture of excess shift gears to become a sustainable one?
(more…)
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Tags:AL Gore NYT, climate change, ecological unconscious. human relationship to nature, Evan Thomas Newsweeek, excess living, ground up environmental change, human relationship to nature, personal environmentalism, pschological aspects of climate change, sustainability
Posted in climate change, ecopsychcology, human animal interaction, personal environmentalism | Leave a Comment »
February 12, 2010
Yorkshire countryside, UK, photo by hchalkley
Having read my Wasted and Bombed paper, Nick Totton contacted me. He is a body therapist with an MA in psychoanalysis from Yorkshire, part of a network of British therapists of different specialties working on the interface between psychology and the environment. Check them out. And here too. Totton is currently editing a collection of writing on ecopsychology for the journal he edits Psychotherapy and Politics International . He is also working on a book which is intended to bring together ecopsychology, ecotherapy, and political issues. I had the opportunity to read his enlightening key-note address to an Adventure therapy conference.
He wrote: “But as a therapist, I am also aware of the need for a change of mind, a huge shift of consciousness, if humanity is going to take a different path into the future. That is why I have become involved with ecopsychology – an involvement which stems from my work as a body psychotherapist: it seems to me that a positive relationship with the other-than-human is founded in a positive relationship with our own embodiment.”
Between Glenn Albrect in Australia, Thomas Doherty and Peter Kahn on the west coast and now these folks in the UK, along with myself and the folks at CRED in NYC where I have spent some time learning and researching, it does feel as though there is a growing international interest in the unacknowledged relationship between our psyches and our environment. Thrilling, really.
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Tags:ecopsychology, Ecopsychology UK, ecopsychology west coast, ecospsychology Australia, international ecopsychology, mind nature relationship
Posted in climate change, ecopsychcology, personal environmentalism, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
February 1, 2010
A NYTimes article by Daniel Smith describes a growing field of psychology, ecopsychology, that examines links between the function of the human psyche and nature. Glenn Albrecht in Australia coined “solastalgia” – “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault.” Thomas Doherty is a clinical psychologist in Portland Oregon trying to analyze and explicate the relationship between environmental issues and psychological well-being. Peter Kahn is a developmental psychologist researching, among other things, how technologically mediated nature versus real nature impacts human functioning. My take? In an article published in Psychoanalytic Dialogues (which to my delight Doherty has used in his courses), I suggest that some common behaviors of young adulthood like obliterative drinking, excessive sexuality and dissociative materialism – as well as other classic psychological difficulties – are very much an expression of our changed relationship to the physical environment. In another paper based on random interviews I see a pattern. The more engaged a person’s relationship to the physical world, the more active they are in making choices about their life. In other words, the mind’s agency is directly affected by experiences with the environment. Like Gregory Bateson , I believe that the mind and the planet/environment/ecology in which we live define each other in an ongoing dialectic. What does this mean for you? (more…)
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Tags:ecological unconscious. human relationship to nature, green consciousness, mind nature relationship, solastalgia, urban environmentalism
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January 5, 2010
In his New Year’s address, the pope called on Catholics (and I assume the rest of us can participate) to consider protecting the environment a personal responsibility as well as a political event. The Pope said, “An objective shared by all, an indispensable condition for peace, is that of overseeing the earth’s natural resources with justice and wisdom.”
If we don’t protect our planet and treat it as the sacred entity that supports life, we risk our own lives, we threaten humanity. Political decisions and legislation often brings about social changes. Copenhagen was a little more important than the Pope might wish to acknowledge. Yet, I also believe that change begins at home. Most of us wonder, what might living differently entail? How would it help me? What follows are three things anyone can do that will help the environment and support psychological health.
(more…)
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Tags:Copenhagen, environment, ground up environmental change, personal environmentalism, Pope's new year address, relationship to nature
Posted in climate change, ethics, personal environmentalism, politics, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
December 11, 2009
The news from Copenhagen is mixed. Josh Marshall is downright gloomy, and concerned. The talk is all politics and few seem to recognize that global warming is happening to people now in the small scale universe of the human mind. Climate change is a psychological problem as much as it is geological and meteorological. My paper in Psychoanalytic Dialogues suggests that the same technical and mechanical innovations that are upsetting the balance of the earth are also disrupting the mind’s equilibrium. The Earth is Faster Now conveys indigenous narratives about arctic how climate change has transformed a community and its people. While it might be easier to accept the fact that people far away in colder climates experience the psychological dimensions of warming, it is harder to grasp that climate change has also already affected modern, western, urban, suburban and rural individuals, even in the United States. Technological change (fast paced stimulation, constant stimulus gratification), carbon emissions, environmental contaminants, and decreased access to land and outdoor spaces have created children and adults who think, feel and understand reality differently than generations past. The differences in thought structure may render them incapable of both perceiving global warming’s threats and acting to alter their course. These differences in thought structure may also promote behaviors that continue to promote the destruction of our ecosystem. Climate change is not only about politcs. It is about the everyday life of the human psyche. As long as solutions continue to only consider matters of state and economy, I’m not sure anyone can inspire the changes in human consciousness necessary to confront this problem and take care of our struggling planet.
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Tags:climate change, Copenhagen, environment, global warming, pschological aspects of climate change
Posted in climate change, global warming, politics | Leave a Comment »
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