Emotions are a renewable resource that can help us identify allies – people who are outraged as we are, who have feelings like anxiety, anger and grief can foster connections and build coalitions and use these emotions to amplify their message and power change.
As the talks at COP28 wind down, I wonder if anything will make the agreements stick this time. I’m not alone in my scepticism. Thousands of climate activists (many of them youth who will be disproportionately affected by the climate crisis) share this sentiment.
The climate crisis is not just an environmental or political issue; it’s a deeply emotional one. We often discuss policies, technologies, and innovations in combating climate change, but there’s a vital, often overlooked aspect: the role of emotions in driving effective change. We are biased to ignore emotions and lack the skills to utilise them.
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Emotions move people. They make us buy beer, cheer for our favorite team, and even turn out to vote in elections. But emotions are not being effectively included in the climate change conversation.
A recent study identified emotions like shame, guilt, powerlessness, and confusion keep us from engaging in taking climate action. Emotions of concern, hope, anger drive us to higher levels of engagement.Our emotions are not just reactions; they are the energy we need to get into the fight.
Climate scientists and youth activists have been on the front lines for years. Our lonely Cassandras, these pioneers warned us about the peril in our future but have been ignored. Their pain and feeling of being overwhelmed also signal a different crisis – a climate mental health crisis. The two are intertwined and cannot be ignored. The path to our sustainability as people on this planet runs through emotions. They are our renewable resources that we can use to re-imagine our future.
How can emotions be a force for change? Emotions help us identify allies. People who are outraged together can organise and amplify their message. People who grieve together share a bond that something they care about is lost. By fostering connections and building coalitions, they can transform their feelings into positive action. Hard feelings like anxiety, anger and grief can be fuel for change. We need to develop more skills to transform emotions into innovation. From our suffering we are able to envision a future worth fighting for.
The climate crisis affects us all, but not all of us equally. It is essential to use empathy to create just solutions that support all parties.
While we may intellectually understand our collective responsibility, until we feel what it is like to experience a natural disaster, lose a home, be forced to emigrate, we cannot grasp the scale or urgency of the problem. It is too easy to postpone, deflect and disengage. Empathy is the connection between us, but globally l empathy levels are on the decline. To strengthen it we must feel together.
Until we feel what it is like to experience a natural disaster, lose a home, be forced to emigrate, we cannot grasp the scale or urgency of the problem
Are there solutions to be found? Optimism, a key skill of emotional intelligence, is crucial for envisioning and working towards a sustainable path. Building a shared legacy, a safe and green planet is something more impossible than anything we can create alone and is a key driver for people.
Purpose is the fire that gets you up in the morning. Some call it a “noble goal” or something you can’t achieve in your lifetime but you do it anyway. If we can engage more people to harness the power of their emotions toward individual and collective action for climate action we are on the path to that sustainable future. But this can’t start until we open ourselves up to feeling our emotions and putting them to work.
The climate crisis is at an impasse. We send our leaders to high level meetings with an outdated framework to “keep emotions out of it” in the hopes of making “rational decisions.”
But emotions and cognition are intricately intertwined. Research shows that people with significant brain injuries that impair their ability to regulate emotions – are unable to make good decisions. Not because they lack logical thinking skills, but because they are not able to leverage their emotions to guide the decision making process.
Similarly, our leaders fail to make breakthrough solutions because they are not using emotional data in their negotiations.
As we face this global challenge, let us harness our emotions, optimism, empathy, purpose as a common language that connects us and a renewable energy source to catalyse change, we urgently need
