"Just Like Me" - Connecting Students for Climate Resilience

National Public Radio (NPR) has a new special series "Stress Less" that this week focuses on climate anxiety in college students and exercises that professors developed to help them cope, described in the episode titled "Here's how to turn climate change anxiety into action." It looks like this episode might be the inaugural episode of the series. The journalist behind it is Allison Aubrey, from the food & health beat.

The story talks about a UC Santa Barbara student studying a coral reef only to come back a year later and find it apparently dead. This is a story I've heard before coming from career scientists studying reefs, glaciers, endangered species, and other natural resources that don't stand much of a chance in the face of climate change: finding out the thing you study (and consequently love) might be unable to survive climate change creates climate anxiety. In response to this, the University of California created a curriculum called Climate Resilience, co-directed by Drs. Jyoti Mishra of UCSD, Elissa Epel of UCSF (of the UCSF Center for Climate, Health and Equity's Mental Health Initiative), and Philippe Goldin of UCD. It looks like the course was launched in spring 2024. I was struck how "Just Like Me," one of the class exercises described in the NPR story, sounds a lot like the loving-kindness meditation ("metta") practiced by Buddhists, where you picture people you know and people you don't know - all individuals with whom you have different kinds of relationships - and send them good will. In "Just Like Me," students sit in pairs and try to imagine the other person as a baby, as a child, as someone who has gone through pain and joy the same as they have. The meditation ends with "I know you want to be happy, just like me."

In addition to being reminded of the Buddhist mettta practice, this meditation reminds me of the Transformational Resilience framework, which describes the two things necessary for resilience as "presencing" and "purposing," the first necessary to feel OK in your body, to manage cortisol, and the other to feel connected to a larger collective purpose. The "Just Like Me" meditation seems intended to build both a sense of well-being and connection.

We can't slow climate change through stress reduction, but techniques like these can help students not lose hope on the path forward into a climate-changed future. The student described in the story as feeling hopeless facing the degraded state of the coral reef she had studied, Jada Alexander, graduated and created a San Diego-based initiative to foster environmental stewardship among children and adults through yoga and surfing, Daybreak Beach Club, "Connecting to Nature, Healing Through the Ocean."

10 Things I've Learned...and an 11th Thing

I was solicited by Impakter Magazine (focused on sustainable development) to write about being a woman in the climate and energy fields. I asked if I could write about being a queer woman in the climate/energy fields, and they said yes. The resulting article was published Monday (Aug. 5, 2019):

10 Things I’ve Learned as a Queer Woman in the Climate and Energy Fields

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The 11th Thing I Learned: What Millennials Want to Know More About

Impakter's mission goes beyond talking about the sustainable development goals-- it also has an express focus on connecting Boomers and Millennials. Well, I'm Gen X, so this isn't exactly my bailiwick, but it gave me an excuse to identify who among my friends are Millennials and ask them what they would like to learn more about on the sustainable development front. (This was before Impakter clarified that it wanted a personal reflection piece from me about my journey in the climate and energy fields.)

For future reference, here is my draft topic list based on my Millennial friends' suggestions.

Gender and Disaster
- Environmental disaster response policy creates exposure to risk when it doesn't account for gender differences
- Women versus men, cis versus transgender, non-binary people's rights in a disaster situation
- The role of official state-sponsored forms of identification in brokering benefits in disaster zone
- Gate-keeping by gender, immigration status

Personal versus Community Resilience
- What are the goals for resilience?
- How do they address structural gaps in resources?
- How far can a resilient mindset minus structural support get you?
- Tips for resilient mindset
- Tips for a more resilient community

Pros and Cons of Community Gardens
- Can they improve food security in a meaningful way in vulnerable communities?
- What cities provide land and funding for community gardens? Are they already relatively resilient cities?
- The apocalyptic view of future food security and possible role of community gardens, practically speaking
- What about just plain green space to address air quality and heat island effects?
- Are green spaces more sustainable/realistic than community gardens for addressing the more pressing climate impacts (more pressing than food insecurity)?
- Community cohesion and returns to community - is that the best role for community gardens?
- Can community gardens combat food deserts and offset gentrification impacts?

Sustainability/Resilience/Public Safety & Microgrids
- Local government and state utility initiatives worth watching
- Private initiatives worth watching

Green Buildings
- LEED certifications  - the sustainable and artistic aspects of these designs.

Interesting Innovations
- Waste water electricity generator?
- Researchers figured out how to grow coral at rapid rates?

Composting Burials
-In Washington State soon you’ll be able to turn a loved one's ashes into compost (more environmentally friendly than cremation) - an initiative led by the Urban Death Project/Recompose

Sustainable Farming
- Agroforestry, hugelkultur
- Other types of sustainable, cool farming systems

In case Impakter comes back to me for more content, I've got a running start.

When Armageddon is Your Day Job: The Discussion Continues

I was invited to write an article as a result of the workshop "When Armageddon is Your Day Job: Coping Strategies" -- a workshop I coordinated/co-led at the National Adaptation Forum back in May -- and it has finally, after months of back and forth, gone live on Ensia, the independent publication supported by the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota:

Is Climate Change Driving You To Despair? Read This. (Sept. 19, 2017).

While my mind has since wandered to other things (the parade of deadly hurricanes competing for headlines with the current U.S. administration's exhausting parade of bad decisions), I still often wonder if people are taking this seriously, the question of how to cultivate hope. It turns out people are ready to dig in. In the last few days I've been invited to participate in a conversation on the podcast Warm Regards, meteorologist Eric Holthaus' biweekly production, co-hosted by paleoecologist Jacquelyn Gill and ProPublica journalist Andy Revkin. I've also been contacted by the host of the podcast America Adapts, conservation ecologist Doug Parsons (formerly of the NPS Climate Change Response Program and Society for Conservation Biology). I'm not sure where this will all lead, but hopefully the discussion will continue after the recording mics are turned off.

If you are on the West Coast and looking for places to talk about preparing our communities for the psychological shock of climate change, take a look at the two upcoming conferences being organized by the International Transformational Resilience Coalition:

• Nov. 15-16, 2017, in Portland Oregon:  Preparing People for Climate Change in the Pacific Northwest (registration is still open but it is expected to sell out).
• Jan. 24-25, 2018, in Oakland, California: Preparing People for Climate Change in California (early bird registration ends Oct. 15).

I am planning to attend both: look for my report-back summaries here!

The Aftermath of "Armageddon:" Reporting back from NAF

I want to give a report-back on my May 10, 2017, National Adaptation Forum session "When Armageddon is Your Day Job: Coping Strategies." I co-organized this with Amber Pairis (Climate Science Alliance) and Kristen Goodrich (Tijuana River NERR). We had about 33 people (with some people sneaking out the back early and some sneaking in late). We wanted to give people something to put on their badges so we could find each other to continue the discussion after the session, so Amber brought wonderful color-your-own-sticker stickers and colored pencils, which yielded some really lovely art. I was afraid everyone would be too professional to color stickers, but someone Tweeted from the session as it was starting "Join us in Sticker Club, Room 11!" People were way into coloring.

We started by stating our intention (to share coping strategies for adaptation professionals and frontline communities) and hearing more about Amber's work with her Climate Kids program, where she finds hope and inspiration in a new generation taking hold of environmental conservation and climate change. We were hoping to steer the workshop in the direction of ways to find hope and inspiration.

Then we reviewed some relevant concepts and research, including:

• "Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance," EcoAmerica's new report released March 29, 2017, authored by its Climate for Health staff working with the American Psychological Association, which outlines some of the acute and chronic ways climate change is affecting the mental health of both individuals and communities.
• The principles of "Presencing" and "Purposing," from Bob Doppelt's Transformational Resilience approach to climate change-induced trauma and toxic stress. In preparation for this session I listened in on a series of talks he gave over the month of April, and also watched the recording of the California Department of Public Health's Climate Action Team Public Health Working Group meeting held on Oct. 18, 2016, entirely dedicated to the theme of mental health and climate change, which included a talk by Mr. Doppelt. The recording is available here (IE browser recommended) and you can jump to Mr. Doppelt's talk at 1:20:00 (running to 1:37:38). See the PowerPoint presentation he shared with that talk.

The idea of "presencing" is to meet the basic human need of feeling safe and OK in your body (i.e., meditation, breathing exercises, taking walks), and "purposing" is to meet the basic human need of feeling like you are part of something bigger, that you matter (i.e., connecting with organizations and communities that support your core values). I've been thinking about these concepts almost every day since I learned about them. I think most self-help mechanisms fall into one or the other category. 

We also introduced the term "pre-traumatic stress disorder," coined by Harvard psychiatrist Lise van Sustern. (Read an article by Daniel Oberhaus that quotes her on this topic from Feb. 2017.)

Next, we elicited from participants some reactions to the questions:

• What keeps you up at night?
• How do you foster optimism?
• Where do you find opportunities for growth?
• Do you have any examples of where you found new meaning or opportunities in an adverse situation?

Then we asked participants to add their contributions to flip chart sheets posted in each corner titled respectively:

• Greatest fears
• How you are coping right now
• Ideas for coping that are working for you and can be maintained
• Greatest hopes

At the outset of the talk we had given everyone two index cards, and asked participants to write their greatest hope on one card and take it with them, and to write their greatest fear on the other card and leave it with us in a special box we brought to collect them (asking them to imagine they are leaving those fears behind, for someone else to carry and take care of). 13 people left cards in that box. I read them later. People are grappling with issues on the scale of being afraid we've killed God. This is not something that a garden-variety work-life balance workshop will treat.

I rang a bell every 5 minutes to cue people to move on to the next sheet. A lively discussion was in progress at each station every time I rang the bell. During this time a participant came up to me and suggested the next time we do this workshop we shouldn't ask people to look for hope, essentially saying there is no hope, the best we can look for is "peace." 

I've been sitting with that thought. 

An alternative view that I heard later from a friend who was sitting outside the session and overheard some of it was that we shouldn't despair, we should "fight harder." 

That's another thought with which I've been sitting.

I wonder which perspective is most helpful to whom and at what point in their struggle to make a difference.

Next we asked participants to return to their sticker coloring stations and I and my co-organizers read out some things that were written on the various lists. The "how I'm coping now" sheet included a fair range of different types of alcohol and other routes of escape. The sheet we intended to be for "sustainable" coping mechanisms had some interesting items like:

• Release the need to be right 
• Stay offline after work
• Talking to friends, hugging friends
• Humor
• EMDR
• Walking dogs for the Humane Society
• Contemplative practices (including ceremony, quiet retreats, chanting, lectio divina, walking, prayer)
• Outdoors activities like gardening, hiking
• Yoga
• Sleep

One person pointed to a healthier beverage for unwinding.

One person's response to how s/he's coping

I remarked that most of these things were solitary, more about "presencing," not necessarily connecting to a larger community, so I asked for some more suggestions in the "purposing" category, and someone said:

"My mom always said that if you're feeling bad go do something for someone else."

... I noted that this lined up with things I learned in the Science of Happiness, a MOOC run out of the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center. (Read more here: Kindness Makes You Happy and Happiness Makes You Kind [2011].)

Lastly we discussed the possibilities for creating a community of practice around supporting climate change practitioners' mental health. More to come on that, I hope!

Further resources:

• Read more about Bob Doppelt's International Transformational Resilience Coalition (ITRC)
• Watch Dr. Susanne Moser's keynote address Hope: A Bridge Without Railing at the 2015 Conference on Communication and Environment" about the importance of active hope in the face of climate disruption and other threats to life on the Earth" (1:27). Susi starts speaking at 10:15.
• Read the article on which this lecture is based (Moser & Berzonsky 2015, still in peer review? apparently?)
• When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job by John Richardson, the 2015 Esquire article that inspired the title for my session at NAF.
• Is This How You Feel? - Letters from climate scientists about their fears.
• More Than Scientists - Video clips of climate scientists talking about why they do their work.
• The Art of Empathy: Honoring Your Emotional Ecosystem by Karla McLaren, M.Ed., a 2-page handout we gave to session participants.

...Even further resources (added 24 May 2017):

More reading

Beyond Storms and Droughts: the Psychological Impacts of Climate Change (51 pages, EcoAmerica 2014) - the report on which EcoAmerica based its 2017 report.

The Psychological Effects of Global Warming on the United States: and Why the U.S. Mental Health Care System is Not Adequately Prepared (60 pages, National Wildlife Foundation 2012)

Climate Depression is for Real. Just Ask a Scientist. (Thomas 2014) - a short article in Grist about the emerging problem of climate scientists experiencing trauma from their work. It includes a link to Gillian Caldwell's 2010 Grist piece 16 tips for avoiding climate burnout, which goes more in depth into climate trauma survival tips from psychiatrist Lise van Sustern.

Resources associated with the book Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy (Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone 2012)

More on Bob Doppelt's "Transformational Resilience" Movement

Webinars & workshops - on the right-hand sidebar find links to webinar recordings.

Upcoming Workshops

• Lane County Resilience Summit, Eugene, Oregon, June 6, 2017 (registration is almost closed- 10 spots left)
• Pacific Northwest Conference on Building Human Resilience for Climate Change, November 15-16, 2017, Portland, Oregon (registration opens June 1, 2017)
• California Conference on Building Human Resilience for Climate Change, January 24-25, 2018, Oakland, California (registration opens July 1, 2017)

International Transformational Resilience Coalition Membership Application (free)

Order "Transformational Resilience: How Building Human Resilience to Climate Disruption Can Safeguard Society and Increase Wellbeing" (300 pages, Doppelt, 1st ed. 2016)

One more "resilient communities" resource 

Transition US - "Growing a Movement for Resilient Communities" - this is an organization recommended by one of our workshop participants. It is an NGO that works closely with the UK-based Transition Network. It "seeks to build community resilience in the face of such challenges as peak oil, climate change and the economic crisis."