(00:01): 

Well, I'm in over my head. No one told me I'm trying to keep my footprints small, harder than I thought it could be. I'm in over my head. What do I really need? Trying to save the planet oh will someone please save me? Trying to save the planet oh will someone please save me? 

(00:25): 

Welcome to In Over My Head. I'm Michael Bartz. My guest today is Susan Clayton. Susan is a professor of psychology at the College of Wooster. As a conservational psychologist, she's interested in understanding and promoting a healthy relationship between humans and nature. Her research focuses on the implications of climate change for psychological wellbeing, the social processes that promote environmental concern and identity, and the psychology of justice. Professor Clayton has been influential in the field of conservation psychology, authoring several books and numerous articles and chapters on the topic. She's also a lead author on the sixth assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Welcome to In Over My Head, Susan. 

(01:01): 

Thanks. It's a pleasure to be with you. 

(01:03): 

So in talking about changing minds, I was thinking about our psychological reactions to the climate crisis. Some people are deeply affected while others are not, and I think this has implications about how we react as individuals and collectively as a conservational psychologist, you've researched people's social and emotional responses to changes in the natural environment. So I'm looking forward to chatting with you about this. I think to begin, I'd like to discuss your current research around climate anxieties, since this seems like it's a growing problem. Perhaps you can start by briefly summarizing your work in this area. 

(01:31): 

Sure. Well, it was about 10 years ago that I really started to think about mental health impacts of climate change. But probably much more recent, like four or five years that I started to think about this phenomenon that has become called climate anxiety, which is the idea that simply knowing about climate change can be associated with a degree of emotional distress. So one of the things I wanted to know is, is this just worry or is this something that might be considered threat to mental health? So with a colleague of mine, Brian Karazsia, we develop a scale to assess whether climate change has an impact on people's essentially ability to live their lives. And we use some standard clinical measures that were associated with threats to mental health. And what we found was that of course most people are not, their mental health is not impaired by concerned about climate change, but for some people it does seem to be so and for enough people that I think this is a problem we should be aware of. So that was definitely the first stage of the research, just to be able to say that yes it is a threat to mental health, our concerns, our distress, our anxiety. And to sort of follow up on that, I've been looking into you know, who is most anxious perhaps, are there things that can be done to help people cope with that anxiety and what leads anxiety to essentially threatened health or perhaps be a positive motivator to take action? 

(02:56): 

So you said this was a growing problem. What sort of of percentage of of the population thinks about climate anxiety or, or feels like it is an issue for them? 

(03:05): 

It's hard to give it a specific number because I think it's changing every year as we become more and more aware of the impacts of climate change. I will say that there's repeated research showing that, you know, well over half the population is worried about climate change. Something like maybe even 70 or 80% feels that they're going to be personally threatened by climate change. But the proportion that for whom this is actually threatening their mental health is much smaller, but still maybe 15 to 20%. So I think that's, that's definitely significant. 

(03:37): 

Oh, for sure. That's, that's a, a bigger number than maybe I was expecting. Yeah. And so I guess maybe generally, who is most affected by climate anxiety? Cause I feel like maybe in the news you read about yeah, you know, these young people, oh, they're such snowflakes, oh they're affected by climate anxiety. Is that the case? Is it young people or is, does that happen across the age spectrum? 

(03:56): 

It seems more common among the younger adults. So maybe even late teens, early twenties, those are the people who are the most worried and you know, for good reason because they are facing the impacts in a much more real way than I . I literally heard someone say the other day in response to a question about this, well, I'm not that worried about climate change because I'll be dead. So the older generations have perhaps this feeling of not being as exposed. But I do wanna push back on the idea and I, I know you were just joking that young people are snowflakes because they're also really involved and active at a, you know, a really high level in trying to do something about the climate change. So I think that they're not just sort of sitting around and whimpering, they're distressed and anxious, but they're also angry and active. 

(04:44): 

Absolutely. And if I remember correctly, like even in your paper you talked about how young people are often leading the change for social justice and other things throughout the decades, right? Stopping certain wars or things like that. So I feel like young people are just generally more engaged that way. They're very passionate and they're very excited to get involved. Right? 

(05:01): 

Yeah, I think that's often true. 

(05:03): 

And so I guess with the climate anxiety, so a certain percentage of the population, yeah, they're concerned about the environment as I am, as with the show, you know, I want to talk about it, but I guess what I am curious about is when does that shift happen? Where it turns from something that I'm concerned about to something that's causing anxiety in my life and maybe I can't function or, or can't do anything. 

(05:25): 

Exactly. And and you've kind of referred to this, when we think about, you know, all the other threats to mental health, we might experience like, you know, I'm feeling a little bit depressed today, or I'm feeling a little bit stressed. How do we decide if that's just a bad mood or if it's really a, a problem for mental health is partly does it affect your functioning? Are you saying things like, I can't sleep because of my worries about climate change or I can't concentrate at work, I can't enjoy myself with my friends. So that would be the kind of marker that your concerns are beginning to overwhelm your ability to live your life 

(05:57): 

At that point. I, I assume you would probably want to seek professional help. I would think. 

(06:02): 

In many cases, absolutely. You know, and I'm a obviously a strong supporter of the idea that therapy for mental health can really help. But sometimes, you know, having a good friend can help also. So if you don't have access to a therapist, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean you're kind of doomed to go on being anxious. 

(06:19): 

Does climate anxiety maybe on the stronger end but maybe not so much, does it lead to inaction or are there more cases of people, like you mentioned the young people taking action. What has been your findings? 

(06:31): 

Yes, this is very much, you know, an active research question. Most of the research shows that higher climate anxiety is associated with more active involvement and more behavior change in response to climate change. So it does seem to be motivating some evidence that maybe at the highest levels of anxiety that it becomes more paralyzing. This is one of our questions is, you know, what leads it to go one way or another? And we don't really have the answer yet, although I suspect some of it has to do with, you know, what's your social context? Are you surrounded by people who are sympathetic to your emotional responses and do you see opportunities to get involved with groups who are working to address the issue? Or are people telling you not to be silly that you're overreacting and you just don't feel there's anything you can do? 

(07:15): 

Yeah. And so I guess if we're looking at addressing climate anxiety, talked a bit about some of those supports that are available, even just talking to a friend, what are some other things that people could do to lower their anxiety and possibly to take action? 

(07:31): 

Well, I would say so one thing that we have pretty good reason to think is true is that taking action can help you deal with your anxiety. Because anxiety is about it's partly about uncertainty, but it's partly also about feeling helpless. And when you get involved, you start to feel less passive and more someone who is trying to actively engage with the issue and take control of your life. And certainly if you get involved with some group efforts, you're going to feel more effective than if you're just trying to work on your own. And those social interactions, anybody who's been involved in social advocacy can probably recognize that there are some very positive emotions associated with working with others to address the issue. So just those interactions can be pleasurable. For people who are really, really anxious, I think two things are probably going to be important and one is learning to let go to step away to take time off from the issue. 

(08:25): 

So obsessively looking at all the bad news about climate change is probably not good for any of us, but especially for people who are sort of already feeling anxious. So just allowing yourself to not feel solely responsible for changing the world and say, yes, I'm involved. This is important to me, I'm working on it, but today I'm gonna take the day off. Or you know, maybe I'll take the week off. Maybe I'll just step back for a little while. So giving yourself a break. And then there are skills associated with monitoring your own emotions, perhaps recognizing the things that are triggering these births of anxiety and learning to avoid those triggers or sort of to prepare for them. Just simple things like deep breathing which can maybe lower that sort of very immediate sense of anxiety and stress, mindfulness exercise, taking walks, those kinds of things can be very helpful as well. 

(09:15): 

Obviously you can have those coping mechanisms, but I'm just also just curious kind of the role of media in all this and, and maybe it's maybe a bit of a basic question, but you know, you talk about maybe not reading the news, let's take a break from the news. Like is it that we're seeing more of this because it's in the news more as far as, you know, this is a a disaster, there's a climate crisis we need to act. Is that part of it or is it more just that this has been happening all the time but we're talking about it more? 

(09:42): 

No, I think that that almost certainly is part of it and that there's an irony which is that people who are not worried about climate change, you know, people who are maybe denying the reality of climate change aren't probably not gonna be feeling this level of anxiety. If you don't know about it, you're not going to worry. So you're not presented with that threat to your mental health. Which leads us to kind of the paradox or the fundamental question, should the media be paying attention to climate change or not? And obviously I think they should. I think people need to know, I think good moods based on ignorance are not sustainable in a general sense. But I think that there's still very much a tendency for, you know, the mainstream media and in fact even more niche media to overemphasize the doom and not pay enough attention to positive stories. So I think there are things we can do to improve media coverage in a way that would help people feel less anxiety without that improvement in mental health being based on avoiding the issue. 

(10:40): 

Yeah, and I feel like changing the mainstream media or any media is a a big task for sure. Cause they obviously want the eyeballs, they want the clickbait, they want people to engage in those sensational headlines, obviously draw people in. I guess perhaps my thinking is maybe as an individual, can you maybe read that sensational headline and maybe take it in context? Is that possible? 

(11:02): 

I think people can learn to be more critical, mindful consumers of the content they see. I mean the trouble is of course when you read these very bad climate change stories, they're quite often true. So you can't sort of say, hey, maybe this is a little bit exaggerated. But I think what we all could do is maybe deliberately seek out some positive stories as well because they're out there positive individual actions, positive policy changes, positive technological developments, and just being a little bit more aware of our own need to bring a little balance in our exposure to those kinds of information. 

(11:39): 

And you briefly touched on climate change denial, kind of the opposite side of the anxiety of someone not paying attention. And can you talk a bit about your research on climate change denial? 

(11:47): 

Yeah. so I haven't so much looked at denial specifically except in a sense of a lack of concern. But there's certainly a lot of research, there's a lot of different explanations for denial. And some of it is that climate change feels unreal to many of us. I think that is less true with sort of every passing month. But you know, five years ago, let's say, I think most Americans thought of climate change as something that was going to happen in the future. Something that might be affecting people on the other side of the world but not as something that was affecting them or people they knew. Now we have a growing sense, I think, of the impact in particular of wildfires, of hurricanes, of even that astonishing heat dome that we experienced year and a half ago or so, and just high temperatures more generally. 

(12:35): 

And of course this ties back to media coverage that 10 years ago the media might report a storm and say something like, some people would attribute this to climate change. Now when the media report on these storms, they just say these storms are more likely and they're heavier, they're stronger because of climate change. So it's harder for us to feel that climate change is remote. It feels a lot more present to us. But another reason people deny climate change is the reason that people deny everything. And I think this is one of the things that is associated with psychology as a field. We know that people engage in denial of things that they don't want to face up to. And as a college teacher, I can tell you I see this every day when my students are kind of in denial about their upcoming tests or or homework assignments. So it's a very common human tendency to just think this is an unpleasant topic, it's scary, I don't wanna think about it. And so we don't think about it. 

(13:28): 

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense for sure. But I think if I remember correctly in one of your papers, it also referenced environmental identity, like how we identify also might predict if we believe in climate change or if we're feeling anxious about it, if that's my understanding. 

(13:42): 

Oh, absolutely. And I think you asked a few minutes ago about who was most anxious and I think I got distracted from answering that question. So the people who are most worried, we talked about younger people, being most worried, but the people who kind of value the environment the most are also the most worried, not surprisingly. And so one of the things that I've been studying for even longer than I've been studying climate change is people's sense of themselves as connected to and interdependent with the natural environment. It's something I came to after hearing people describe the sort of feeling they would say, I feel differently about myself. I feel like I'm a part of everything. I understand the interconnectedness of things. And it turns out that that's a feeling a lot of people have at least some of the time. And it's a good feeling to have. It's associated with a sense of wellbeing that we don't feel so isolated when we feel connected to the natural world. But it is the case that a downside of this sort of perception of yourself is a greater sense of the harm that is posed by climate change because nature just matters more to you. And you recognize that nature is not one thing that is completely separated from us. You know, we are part of nature and when nature is affected, we are affected. 

(14:54): 

And you touched a bit on kind of the benefits of being in nature. Do people necessarily need to go into the middle of the woods to get those benefits or can they be around plants or green spaces in urban areas? Does that have an equal benefit? 

(15:06): 

It's a great question. And the happy answers, any amount of nature seems to help a little bit. There's even been research showing that, you know, having a picture of a tree in your office or you know, a small potted plant helps being able to look out your window and see nature helps. Having trees on your city street helps. So it's certainly not the case. And I, I think that's another kind of misconception we often have is that nature is out there, it's not around us and so you have to drive for an hour to get out to nature, but the nature that exists in the city can be quite beneficial. That said, certainly really feeling immersed in the natural world probably has more benefits than simply looking at a plant on your desk. 

(15:48): 

Oh, that, that makes a lot of sense. As a, a total sensory experience being out in, in nature in the woods or in the mountains or something. And I remember one of your papers talked about technology and how, you know, we're taking in more technology and maybe less nature or if maybe we can use technology to be in contact with nature. Maybe tell me a bit about that. 

(16:07): 

Yes, and this is too, I feel like it's a a maybe a bit of a, of a devil's bargain or a dangerous area. There's definitely research suggesting that experiencing nature through the medium of technology can also have benefits. So watching nature videos, some research that's been looking into the effect of virtual reality depictions of nature. And on the one hand that's good because you know, it's hard for a lot of people to get out to nature, but I worry that if we can get the benefits of nature from technology, we might care less about protecting the actual nature. So we have to kind of be mindful of that possible side effect. But I think, you know, while some informal environmental education centers or conservation organizations like zoos or botanical gardens are really thinking about ways that they can utilize technology to enhance the experience of nature and maybe make it available to more people. 

(16:58): 

In talking about that in the technology and how we view nature and how it changes, one of your papers that I found interesting was on connecting children to nature in the anthrop scene. That thought experiment. Do you wanna maybe talk a little about that? 

(17:09): 

Sure. This paper was the lead author, author was Brendan Larson who is a, a philosopher and he was sort of posing this thought experiment, which is if nature is being damaged and sort of reduced in extent, which it is because we know that we're losing biodiversity at a rapid rate and we're losing a lot of habitat as the now 8 billion humans take up more and more true. So if we're losing nature, is it sort of a bad idea maybe as a parent to try and connect your child to the natural world if it's sort of opening up the possibility for more sadness? And I will say that I totally believe it is still worth it for multiple reasons, but we were trying to just kind of raise a provocative question to get people to think about do these changes to the natural world require us to rethink some things that maybe feel very basic? 

(18:04): 

Certainly many, many parents, even people who are not necessarily environmentalists, but many parents just seem to instinctively feel that it's important to connect their children to the natural world. And that's why, you know, so many parents will go to zoos or just go to parks or if they can maybe go to national parks as well as smaller urban areas. And if we have to think about changes in the ways we bring up our children, that might be a way of getting people to think about climate change from a different perspective and giving them a new sense about the kind of impacts that climate change is gonna have. 

(18:39): 

And one thing I found interesting, I thought experiment was just, are you taking your kids into nature because you want to connect with them? It's not necessarily about the nature, it's about those values and just connecting with your children. I found that was an interesting thing. Yeah. 

(18:51): 

And I think these things are all tied up together. So it's not like we have to go out into nature and just be thinking, oh I'm out here experiencing nature. People really like to experience nature with other people. And one of the examples that really brought this home to me, this is, you know, some years ago I was at a conference and one researcher was talking about wolf watching in Yellowstone and she said the first thing people do when they see a wolf is to turn around and try and find somebody else to tell about it. And from my experiences in the national parks, I've certainly encountered that, you know, if you see a mo so you see a something interesting, you look at it, you turn to your neighbor maybe and sort of share that admiration and then as you're walking away you tell other people, hey there's a, you know, there's a moose over there, you'll wanna go see it. So there really are a lot of social interactions surrounding the ways we encounter the natural world. And so I think for parents it's all wrapped up together that helping their children appreciate nature is a way of interacting with their children and sort of sharing those values. 

(19:55): 

Yeah, and like you said, nature isn't necessarily just out there in the woods, it's all around us. So that makes sense. That's, it's also about those social interactions, whether it's with our children or our friends. You are doing work on mental health even with the IPCC reports. Why is mental health an important focus when we're looking at addressing the climate crisis? 

(20:15): 

The most important thing is for people to recognize that there already are mental health impacts of climate change and it's extremely likely that there will be more so that when we think about ways in which humans are going to be affected by climate change again and already are being affected, we need to consider those impacts as well because being aware of them hopefully will make us recognize the importance of responding to climate change. But it also allows us to prepare for them, for example, by strengthening our, our mental health support systems, which are really inadequate in many places. For example, I think anyone who has experienced a major storm for example, or wildfire or maybe a extended period of drought, can appreciate that it just starts to have an effect on your mood and in some cases can really be associated with a full-fledged mental health problem such as extreme anxiety or following a storm post-traumatic stress disorder when there are droughts, people who are strongly affected by those droughts show an elevated risk of suicide. Actually, the same is true even for high temperatures are associated with an increase in suicide. We certainly also have evidence that high temperatures and some of these other weird weather phenomena are associated with just negative moods. But it's not just, you know, feeling slightly sad or feeling slightly down. There Are these psychiatric impacts as well. 

(21:35): 

You've talked about it's people being affected by the heat or different weather patterns or sometimes people have to even leave their homes because of fires or other environmental issues. How does that affect people? 

(21:46): 

Well, and again, just to say this is already happening there are of course people around the globe who have to leave their homeland because of extended drought or you know, people who live in Long Island or coastal areas whose communities are being covered by water. Even in the US they're already communities that have had to be relocated, for example, on the Gulf Coast or in Alaska because of the thawing permafrost. And many people, probably most people feel some attachment to a location. You know, home is not just inside your house, it's also the place where that house is. It's the community, it's the kind of weather you're used to. It's maybe rituals associated with, you know, the cherry blossoms in the spring or you know, the reappearance of a certain kind of bird or a certain amount of snow in the winter. So for many people, even if they stay in one spot, they are seeing changes to their home. 

(22:39): 

That can be kind of disorienting, but many, many people are being displaced because of impacts associated with the changing climate. And it's distressing, it is a threat to mental health because we define ourselves in regard to a particular location in many ways. So when you have to move, you kind of have to relearn all sorts of things you took for granted. And of course when you move you usually move on your own without your community, so you're losing some network of social context. So it just, it threatens our sense of security, our sense of connections threatens our understandings, our ability to understand the world and to know how to function in a particular environment. And so you definitely see elevated rates of mental illness and people who are involuntarily displaced. 

(23:25): 

And I'm not sure if this is part of your research, but do you have any maybe stories of people that you've interacted with who've been impacted by displacement or other things? 

(23:36) 

Interestingly, I was just last week at a symposium held at the University of Pennsylvania talking about some of the impacts of climate change. I didn't realize this, but Philadelphia has experienced a lot of direct impact. It tends to experience more flooding than the average city, for example. And they had a very bad experience with a hurricane not that many years ago. And I heard from two speakers who lived in Philadelphia talking about their experience and just the repeated flooding and the lack of resources, both financial and governmental to help them cope with the impacts of these, these weather events. And they spoke so eloquently about how they didn't wanna move because this was their home and this was the place they'd raised their children and this was the place where they had a neighborhood and they knew the people around them. It was certainly something I thought about before, but it was really moving to hear them articulate just their reluctance to leave the place they called home and their sadness and stress at having to deal with the ways in which the climate was impacting them. 

(24:39): 

Yeah, and that makes me think about, you know, we've been talking about the social connections and things like that. I wonder is there a difference between reading a story about someone who's been impacted and actually seeing them in person and maybe talking with them or just hearing their story face-to-face? Does that have a bigger impact? 

(24:56): 

It probably will. I mean, I suppose there are some people who may be not very good at describing their own experience, in which case it might not have that impact. But in general, we're a very social species so we tend to respond instinctively to what we see on other people's faces, for example. And to some extent if they're expressing a particular emotion, we can at least recognize that emotion and maybe feel a little bit of a, a similar emotion just by watching them. And so absolutely I think that kind of in-person face-to-face encounter is going to be more impactful. And one of the things that means is it's gonna be more memorable because that emotional oomph that we get strengthens the memory and makes it more likely that we'll return to it, we'll connect it to other things we hear. 

(25:41): 

So Susan, this has been really interesting. This show is about empowering citizens to take action on the climate crisis. So based on the discussion we've had, what can people do today to take action? 

(25:52): 

Oh, there's so many things people can do and I think one useful step is to inform yourself. And that doesn't mean just sort of inform yourself about climate change cuz we probably have, we certainly have enough information to start, but inform yourself about the effects you're likely to see in your own neighborhood. Inform yourself about maybe local groups you could get involved in or or local issues that you might have an impact in. And I think starting to do something will just make you feel good. Like, okay, I'm doing it now. I'm in the fight, I'm taking action. And that can be sort of self-perpetuating. I know it's very easy to think, oh I'm just one individual. What can I do that will make a difference? We are all, not only individuals, but we are influences and anything that we do as individuals has the potential to affect all kinds of other people if we publicize it. So think not just about your own actions but about publicizing what you're doing and maybe getting involved with larger groups that can magnify the impact of what you're doing. If you are involved in some sort of organization like your workplace or perhaps a church or a some sort of community group, maybe you can talk to that organization and encourage them to change their practices. Suddenly you're not just changing your own behavior, you're changing the whole organization. So one individual's behaviors can really grow and magnify if we think about those social connections. 

(27:17): 

Great. I think that's some very encouraging advice. So, I really appreciate that. Well, this has been a very interesting conversation, Susan. So, thanks so much for coming on the show. 

(27:25): 

Happy to be here and thanks for focusing on this topic. 

(27:29): 

Well that was my chat with Susan. I think the biggest thing that stood out for me was just the social connections, whether it's anxiety or in action, connecting with people who are of a like mind and doing something is really the best way to feel empowered. Well that's all for me. I'm Michael Bartz. Here's a feeling a little less in over our heads when it comes to saving the planet. We'll see you again soon. In Over My Head was produced and hosted by Michael Bartz original theme song by Gabriel Thaine. If you would like to get in touch with us, email info@inovermyheadpodcast.com. Special thanks to Telus STORYHIVE for making this show possible. 

(28:04): 

I'm trying to save the planet. Oh, will someone please save me?