Research and resources, shaped by those doing the work

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.

This influential paper formalises the concept of the Anthropocene, the proposed epoch in which humans and human societies have become a global geophysical force comparable to natural forces that have shaped Earth's history. The authors trace the Anthropocene's origins to around 1800 with the onset of industrialisation and the massive expansion in fossil fuel use, using atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration as a simple tracking indicator, and describe the 'Great Acceleration' since 1950 during which human activity and its consequences for Earth system functioning have intensified dramatically. Now one of the most widely cited papers in climate and environmental science, it provides a foundational scientific frame that much subsequent climate psychology literature builds on or responds to.

This paper explores the ambitious task of decolonising white-led UK bereavement support services, addressing the inequities embedded in the Whiteness of coloniality and modernity. The authors argue that specialised bereavement services may themselves represent an anachronism of a modernity whose core narrative of control and progress obscures other ways of responding to death, and that the existence of such services, based on claimed expertise, can paradoxically intensify uncertainty about what grief 'is' and how it should be supported. Drawing on the experiences of practitioners from diverse heritage backgrounds, the paper explores decolonising possibilities for bereavement support in the everyday lives of individuals, families and diasporic communities.

This chapter argues that it is the loss of our embodied relationship to ourselves and our world that results in our failure to grasp the reality of what is happening to our natural environment. It calls for a phenomenological approach to psychological exploration and a return to embodied knowing, arguing that all psychotherapy should be body-oriented in a time of environmental breakdown, and discusses the training needs of future environment-aware therapists.

Using Australian national survey data, this study investigates differences between eco-anxiety, eco-depression and eco-anger in their effects on climate action and wellbeing. Contrary to assumptions that all climate-related distress is equally unhelpful, the authors find that eco-anger predicted better mental health outcomes alongside greater engagement in climate activism and personal pro-environmental behaviour, while eco-anxiety and eco-depression were less adaptive, relating to lower wellbeing. Notably, eco-depression was linked to greater participation in collective action even as eco-anxiety predicted lower engagement, positioning anger as a key adaptive emotional driver of climate engagement.

This scoping review identifies and characterises existing mental health and psychosocial interventions designed to address the psychological impacts of climate change. Drawing on both academic and grey literature, the authors identify 37 unique interventions or intervention packages, operating at micro-, meso-, exo- and macrosystem levels through diverse mechanisms. Most interventions have not been formally evaluated, but preliminary evidence is promising, particularly for interventions implemented in low- and middle-income countries disproportionately affected by climate-related disasters, including examples from China, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Brazil, Cameroon, Peru, Tanzania and Vietnam. The review calls for further investment in evaluation, multidisciplinary collaboration, and the development of proactive, forecast-based interventions that anticipate future climate stressors rather than only responding to disasters after they occur.