Learning through COVID-19 and applying this to Climate Change: Let’s move from anxiety to action.
Living through COVID-19 and apply learnings to Climate Change: Let’s move from anxiety to action.
By Megan Kennedy-Woodard and Dr. Patrick Kennedy-Williams
Megan is a climate coaching psychologist and Patrick is a clinical psychologist they are founders of Climate Psychologists
We live in a time where the general consensus seems to be "We are screwed".
As psychologists, it is our job to challenge this perception. The world population is experiencing existential threats in a way that, as humans, we haven't in our past. Epidemics and wars were prevalent, but the constant informational exposure to these threats has amplified our relationship with them. COVID-19 is a testament to the negative role of the 24-hour, mass media cycle and the echo chambers of social media at play. However, if harnessed and used responsibly, there is the potential for these influences to be positively impactful.
When we reflect and acknowledge the evident state of ill-preparation we find ourselves in today, we could view this crisis as an opportunity to better tackle future challenges. There is value in this experience as a mass social experiment if we pay attention to the behaviour of individuals and the responses of governments. We can learn from the reactions and mistakes in this context and apply them to plan for a better response in the future, as we will certainly need to when we awaken fully to the looming consequences of climate change.
When at our best, humans are adept at identifying risk. We are responsive and enact plans based on the information available to us. This makes responding to a crisis like climate change and COVID-19 extremely difficult because the threat is not a sabertooth tiger staring us down, but existential with many variables, false facts, and unknowns. We humans don’t respond particularly well to unknowns. Because of technology's role in the way we consume and process information, our cognitive processes are overwhelmed. We have a constant stream of information (and misinformation) that we are required to measure and make decisions about. We interact with our peers from whom we take cues and we then dial-up or play down our actions and feelings to incorporate their experience, this group mentality can lead to anything from disengagement to complete overreaction (and anywhere in between). As we lay in the wake of this COVID-19 global crisis, we can benefit by utilising this time as a glimpse into the way the world may respond in a few year's time, if nothing is seriously done about the pandemic that is climate change.
If we look at this in numerical terms, a study conducted by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy of 72,000 COVID-19 patients found a 2.3% death rate. A 2019 report by the UNEP Global Environment Outlook stated that exposure to indoor/outdoor air and water pollution costs at least 9 million lives annually. Reuters reported that “The coronavirus shockwaves rippling through U.S. stocks are forcing investors to contemplate outcomes more dire than a recession, including several quarters of declining economic activity, a credit crisis or even a depression.” Yet the UNEP said “Achieving the 2°C Paris Agreement target could save the US $54.1 trillion for a global expenditure of $US 22.1 trillion. Achieving 1.5°C target could lead to a health saving of $US 3.3-8.4 trillion for India and $US 0.3-2.3 trillion for China.” Again we need to start viewing this as a huge opportunity, which is hard to see from the eye of the storm.
In the Coronavirus scenario, we hear stories of empty grocery stores. Toilet paper and hand sanitiser selling on Ebay for extortionate rates. As early as 2009, the think tank, Global Humanitarian Forum, predicted that in response to the climate crisis, humans will likely also respond with civil unrest. "Four billion people are vulnerable now and 500m are now at extreme risk. Weather-related disasters ... bring hunger, disease, poverty and lost livelihoods. They pose a threat to social and political stability". This feels similar. But also, we are seeing encouraging signs of neighbour helping neighbour, politicians recognising the error of deferring crises and not listening to scientists or taking action. This is a wake up call.
I grieve for the lives lost over COVID-19, but I also grieve for the generations to follow them if we as individuals and governments fail to acknowledge how ill equipped we are on a global scale to defend ourselves against the invisible killers that pose the very threat of existence to humanity. In this case COVID-19 on a real but potentially smaller scale, but far more serious in terms of food, water, migration, economy and mortality, the biggest crisis we as humans will likely ever face- climate change.
Why is it that we have not anchored on to the threat of climate change the way we have with COVID-19? It's the same reason people didn't pay much attention at the beginning of the outbreak, the same way governments failed to take appropriate actions earlier on. It's because it can feel too big, too removed, but when we look at it in the practical terms of what needs to change, the instructions are clear. It's about action before the crisis and this is what we need to all wake up to.
I am a climate psychologist, I am an American but have been living in the UK for the last 10 years, I moved to a French town that borders Italy in January 2020. My heart feels a connection to my three homes, so I have been closely observing the reactions from the different countries, governments and people. Having lived in these places, I am aware of the infrastructure and really none of them feel like good options in the case of crisis. I have no health insurance in America. Already on its knees after so many cuts, how can the NHS be expected to stand up to such a flood of need? And I am new to France and not sure where to begin. I think everyone in the world is thinking of their contingency plan, and for most, the options aren’t great.
This weekend I spoke with our Italian neighbors. They told me that their friends were restricted from leaving their homes. They are lucky because they can order groceries online for their parents in Italy. They told me many of their friends' parents have died. That evening, we bathed and fed the kids, responded to emails, sat down to watch something and then received a notification that France is going into lockdown. Just like that, what we knew was coming had arrived and not enough had been done to prepare. We ignored the experts, governments failed to respond and individuals didn’t want to change their behaviour.
Being a climate psychologist, everything about the last few months rings a bit too familiar. Denial, arrogance, dismissal, excitement, panic, grief, acceptance, pontification. It feels like the human condition is so exposed to the continual cycle of negative information and confusion through media and social media that we have lost the human connection, and therefore the significant connection to protecting what nurtures us, what is important to us and what we love. When we respond emotionally to COVID-19, we see a threat to those who are ill, our grandparents, the disruption to our lives because it is here now. When the 2019 Bushfires occurred in Australia, it resonated for a lot of people. We saw wildlife perish and homes incinerated, and we thought, “that could be me”. This will be a huge factor in behavioural change that needs to be applied to the climate- humans are highly motivated to protect what they love and with this empathy comes resolution.
In times of crisis, polarity and pontification distract us from taking positive action
Another issue that keeps the resonance of a crisis at bay is the polarity that we experience in our daily political discourse that has infiltrated our online interactions. This is the kind of poison that seeps in and distracts us from the necessary action we need to take. We are meandering between polarity and pontification. It doesn't take more than an innocuous, yet provocative post on social media to divide the audience. What's dangerous is that a post doesn't even need to be rooted in fact any more for people to begin an aggressive argument on a subject, it just has to appeal on an emotional level. Existing in the world of mass media and mass-communication, we search for information that we agree with (Confirmation Bias). It is easy to see a post on social media explode into- not a debate, but a platform of pontification. We become emotionally engaged and endorse one comment as level-headed and correct, then identify another as idiotic. We fall prey to dichotomous thinking. It’s black and white, good or bad, right or wrong. We descend into a part of our brain where we personalise the situation and fall into dispute and derogation. This doesn't serve the more practical, moderate and constructive part of our brain. Instead, it's a tit for tat, rather than the pursuit of establishing common ground in order to find a solution, which is what we need. Common ground will ultimately unite us to take climate action.
According to Julia Dhar, author of, ‘The Decision Maker's Playbook: 12 Mental Tactics for Thinking More Clearly, Navigating Uncertainty, and Making Smarter Choices’,“The way that you reach people is by finding common ground. It's by separating ideas from identity and being genuinely open to persuasion. Debate is a way to organize conversations about how the world is, could, should be.” So we need to listen to the person in the opposite corner, meet them somewhere in the middle, to allow a real conversation to happen.
In times like this, we are using divisiveness and speculation as a survival tactic. These are a distraction- a negative coping mechanism. Yes, it is perpetuated by the narrative often set forth by media and social media where the importance and significance of a kind gesture, an olive branch, a token of generosity, is muted. But these outlets have the potential to disseminate beginnings of real conversations. When they communicate the moments in this crisis that highlight the beauty of humanity, these are the moments that give us hope. Someone helping the elderly, taking stock of the importance of our loved ones, putting our phones down and reading to our kids, feeling a connection to the world around us because suddenly we are reminded that time is precious. Our world is precious.
We acknowledged that the advice we give for managing climate anxiety is the same we were giving for COVID-19 anxiety:
Accept that these reactive feelings are normal. It is okay that this feels huge.
Talk about how you feel. Connection is key and a worry shared is a worry halved.
Take positive actions- at home and beyond
Make wise behavioural decisions
Don't keep your children in the dark- equip them with (fact-checked!) knowledge and give them tools on how to protect themselves and support others
Take breaks from news and social media
Practice self-compassion in stressful times
Celebrate wins- identify the positives.
(We’ve produced a sister article on how to maintain psychological health in a lockdown here)
A few days after the first French closures, President Macron addressed the nation to inform us we are now on full lockdown. Behaviour was not changing and people weren’t taking the crisis seriously, drastic times cause for drastic measures. However, as we go into lockdown, we see Nice airport terminal closures and the skies are more quiet and peaceful. At street level, the air is being cleared of the smell of diesel. Reuters reported that China showed a marked reduction in pollution after the government imposed travel bans and quarantines, and the data from Italy, which was hit hard several weeks later, suggested a similar pattern. Macron asked the nation to “Question the development model in which our world has been engaged for decades.” He said, “There will come a time in the future where we will have to learn from what we are living through but it is this ability to learn that has seen us come through decades of crisis.” We have the ability to learn.
When this crisis subsides, let us think about our experience in the context of COVID-19 and how we can apply it to climate change and future crisis. Let us really take some time to recognise that this could be the state of the world again- panicked and unprepared. But we don't have to be. We can take necessary action to contain and prevent the spread of climate change. Let's not repeat history. Let's remember what is precious, let's reconnect with our community, let's reconnect with nature, and not take for granted the security of a future. Let us learn from this. Change policy, organise locally, and appreciate the purity and generosity that nature has provided. Let us move from anxiety to action.