Denial & avoidance Reading List

ABSTRACT: The disarmingly innocuous term 'climate change' expresses a psychosocial defense mechanism that prompts us to recoil when we consider the implications of climate science. When viewed honestly through the lens of traumatology, this deepening existential crisis presents an entirely new, unprecedented, and higher-order category of trauma: Climate Trauma. What is unique about this category of trauma is that it is an ever-present, ever-growing threat to the biosphere, one that calls into question our shared identity: what does it mean to be 'human' in the Anthropocene? Because it is superordinate, Climate Trauma is continually triggering all past traumas - personal, cultural, and intergenerational - and will continue to do so until such time as it is acknowledged.

From the PhD thesis abstract (Westcott, University of the West of England, 2016): This study examines the question of whether subjective attitudes to climate change play a significant part in the determination of local authorities' policy and actions on climate change mitigation; whether the personal views of council members and officers about climate change, their beliefs, fears and attitudes affect the outcomes in terms of policy and action, or whether organizational culture, norms and collectively policed limits to discourse have this effect; or whether the influence of central government policy is so overwhelming that action and policy is determined almost wholly by external and objective influences. Interviews with officers and members of local authorities in the South West of England identify that considerable reductions in council carbon emissions are possible when subjective factors align with organisational will.

As scientists call for widespread climate action, this book responds to an alarming rise in climate doomism - the belief that it is too late to do anything about climate change, which leads many people to look away and do nothing, immobilised by defeatist thinking. Drawing from climate science, sociology, psychology and philosophy, Stuart argues that every fraction of a degree of warming avoided means saving lives and livelihoods, and outlines reasons to choose action grounded in active hope instead. The book examines specific policy proposals for effectively limiting global warming, the psychology of motivating climate action and collective action, and closes by outlining a positive vision of the far-reaching social and economic changes needed to forge a better path for people and the planet.