A community built by its members

This special issue is an attempt to further examine environmental challenges through the specific ‘social lens’ of Social Representations Theory and associated approaches.

We are living through a period of unprecedented environmental breakdown which is increasingly being referred to as "the Anthropocene". As the term becomes more and more pervasive, I want to explain why, as a psychologist and a committed environmentalist, I think it is a highly problematic way of framing our predicament.

The IPCC thinks we still have a chance of keeping warming to 1.5C. But current nationally determined pledges to take action to reduce warming, when combined, are emphatically "not on track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels". The window of opportunity is small and shrinking - perhaps 12 years before a 1.5C target is unattainable, assuming in the meantime there is concerted global action to rapidly scale back carbon emissions [...] Look closer, and in an important sense, the IPCC report is all about change and upheaval, especially for the well-off citizens of the developed nations. But it is change on a scale we have never experienced before: “There is no historical precedent for the scale of the necessary transitions, in particular in a socially and economically sustainable way

I am an academic psychologist interested in individual and collective forms of distress in relation to experiences of nature, the climate crisis and environmentalism. My intention here is to talk through what I see as some of the connections between critical approaches to psychology/psychiatry, experiences of emotional distress and the Anthropocene - a new(ish) name for the complex combination of climate and ecological crises we are living through.

The climate disaster future is increasingly becoming the present – and, as the evidence piles up, it is tempting to ask questions about its likely public reception. Numerous psychological perspectives suggest that if we have already invested energy in denying the reality of a situation we experience as profoundly troubling, the closer it gets, the more effort we put into denying it.

Kate Adams - performance maker, lecturer, and co-chair of the Climate Psychology Alliance - talks with host Michael Hanf about how creativity and vulnerability can help people navigate the emotional weight of the climate crisis. They discuss the physical toll of unprocessed emotion, the shame and guilt that can paralyse action, and the spaces Kate creates for people to confront these feelings without judgement - a conversation about grief, hope, and the risk of engaging with what we cannot fix.