Season 2, Episode 14: Emotions and Climate Adaptation with Susi Moser

Climate Change and Happiness

image credit | Mohamed Nohassi

Season 2, Episode 14: Emotions and Climate Adaptation with Susi Moser

Thomas and Panu were pleased to connect with geographer and climate change communications expert Susanne “Susi” Moser, whose path finding publications such as 2007’s Creating a Climate for Change set the stage for much of the current psychology and social science of climate change. Susi shared her own climate journey as a young earth science researcher charting her own emotional responses to the reality of climate change, and how she found allies in the work of ecopsychology activists like Joanna Macy, and ongoing challenges for working scientists to cope with the emotional side of their work. Susi described her mission providing positive visions for change for engineers and planners in the scientific and technical community – climate adaptation professionals whose day jobs are to “look the apocalypse in the face every single day.” Join us for an inspiring conversation on finding new meaning and a larger frame.

“When you think about the scientific or technical professions, it is very uncommon to bring in emotion, your whole selves into the conversation, into your work, right? We're supposed to be, you know, heads on a stick. But that's just not who we are. And, in fact … all the conversation we've had in recent years about storytelling is all about that, right? It is actually about re-embodying ourselves into a larger fabric of who we are as people. What our identity is. How it changes through the experiences we have in life. And how it is held in the community.”

Links

• Susanne Moser

• Creating a Climate for Change

• Successful Adaptation to Climate Change

• The Emotional Toll of Climate Change on Science Professionals

• Stephanie Kaza (Ed.) A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time

• “Once You Know” documentary

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Thomas Doherty: Well, hello, I'm Thomas Doherty.

Panu Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. Our podcast. The show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about this personal side of climate change. Particularly their emotional responses. And how they make sense of this big issue. And today, we're very lucky to have a guest.

Susi Moser: And I'm Susi Moser. And it's just a delight to be here with the two of you. Thank you so much for having me.

Doherty: And Panu and I both know Susi, and her work. We follow her. She's been a leader in this kind of area of climate change, climate psychology, and understanding our emotions and feelings about climate for quite some time. And she's been doing all kinds of innovative work. And so we're glad to have her. And we're gonna have a conversation about that today. Panu, do you want to get us started?

Pihkala: Warmly welcome, Susan. It's such a pleasure to have an opportunity to discuss with you. We've met in person in Finland, actually. You've been an active keynote speaker on topics such as climate change communication, and adaptation. And lots of things related to the human mind and psychosocial issues. But should we start with history? Would you like to share some of your journey? How did you end up in all this and all the stuff related to climate emotions also?

Moser: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I actually think it goes back to the late 1980s. You know, sort of when it first became a topic in public conversation. Obviously relatively, you know, late after it's become a scientific issue. But at that point, I was a student of geography. And I studied earth sciences. And, you know, my climatology teacher was already quite interested in it. But, you know, my geology teacher said, yeah, nothing to worry about. You know, Earth has gone through climate change for a whole bunch of time. So that was sort of my first scientific introduction. And then I was just really curious. Studying it myself.

And I don't know, when I started to realize, my God, what are we talking about? It hit me for the first time, probably in the early 1990s. What it would mean. I studied the impact of storms on coastal regions. I visited coastal regions. I saw what that devastation is like. And, you know, I looked at sea level rise. A curve that is just going up no matter what we do. I mean, it matters what we do in terms of how steep it goes up. But it will go up for millennia. And yeah, most of us on this planet live in coastal areas. And it just became very clear to me from the start that, you know, while this might be the hardest thing to talk about, it is actually going to be one of the most impactful things that human species has ever experienced. And then I just, you know, I tried to communicate that. I was awful at it in the beginning myself. Typical scientist, you know, starting with pretty much the beginning of time to explain things and losing people in five minutes. So, yeah, I had to learn some hard lessons about that.

And then really, you know, once I started to get interested in the question of how we communicate it. I mean, the whole point of the communication at that time was to get better at it. Essentially, to mobilize people. And oftentimes, people used fear. They used guilt. They used all kinds of emotional, you know, ways to get us off our seats. Off our butts. And I was like, wait a minute, this is dangerous territory the way we're doing this. And, you know, as a science communicator, I was trained to forget emotions. Put them aside. And it just felt completely wrong to me to do that. So that's kind of how I first got interested in the emotional side of climate change. And, in fact, you know, a lot of what I've done since is a follow on to this to fully recognize and appreciate that it's actually a very healthy response. And a very normal, non pathological response. How we react emotionally, psychologically, to an existential threat. So I'll stop there for, you know, give you probably lots of things to start poking into. But anyway, that's how I started.

Doherty: But one of the things I'm really interested in is that we talk about this environmental identity. You know, which comes out of conservation psychology. But this idea of our sense of self in relation to nature and the natural world. But you're I'm guessing, if you go even farther back, can you think of things that formed your environmental identity, even younger? Your connection with nature and the natural world? Because it seems to me, you must have had some inner motivation to push through on some of this. Because you must have felt marginalized at the beginning. When you were starting. I'm just wondering, when you look back now, particularly with your insights. And then your larger life story, in early development, can you see any turning points from nature and your connections?

Moser: Well, it was my saving grace to have, you know, a large backyard to go back into. And, I mean, that was, for me, the safe place to be. It wasn't a scary place to be. It was, you know, just where I felt most at home. And so that's been true for me throughout my life. But certainly in my upbringing. Probably my interest in that. And my desire to protect nature. And all those things, they probably go back to my early childhood. And then I just professionalize it by, you know, choosing geography. The one topic that I thought I wasn't going to get bored with, given the size. And the complexity. And many dimensions of Earth with all its people on it. And geography is just perfect for that.

So those were some key choices that I made around that. And then the psychology really came out of my own, you know, introspection of my own reflectivity. And my own experience of nature. And how I experienced hearing about climate change. And what it would, you know, imagining forward what that would mean, for all of us.

Pihkala: Yeah, thanks a lot for sharing all that. That's really fascinating to hear. And how did it go in relation to coping with all of this, during those times 1990s and early 2000s? When you said that somewhere around the early 1990s, you woke up more profoundly to how severe the climate crisis actually is. And then you had some of these quite pioneering ventures. So, how did that go? When did you find some allies at some point?

Moser: Yeah at some point, but not early on. So early on it, you know, felt like I was pretty much alone with my emotional response. And, quite frankly, you know, I probably only let myself go, not very deep into that because it felt overwhelming. And it was probably in the early 1990s that I discovered Joanna Macy's work. And that was essential for me. In fact, actually, it was probably the late 1990s, because in the early 2000s, I took two long training sessions with her. And, you know, led me to actually also lead and integrate the work that reconnects into my work. But that was the first time I actually felt like there were companions on this journey. You know, I wasn't alone with the grief. And, you know, and I will say it's still for most of my daily life, a fairly lonely journey in the sciences, at least it is so unconventional too. Still unconventional to actually name your emotions about the things you study.

So, you know, I know now where my allies are. And the, you know, the allyship has grown in the sense of simply having the fact of climate emotions being talked about more often. In, you know, all your guests are, you two are like, you know, part of that larger field. So that's changed the context. But sort of my daily life, it is still you know, not something I spend all my time in. I don't know if you're aware or your listeners might be interested, there's a documentary that was made. And I was in it. The documentary is called Once You Know. And it actually traces the journey of the filmmaker. But it includes the journeys of scientists who, you know, take the emotional side of their work seriously. And how do they live with that? And how do they integrate that or cope with that? And also use it in a way to, you know, infuse and fuel their work in really wonderful ways. So that was an interesting experience. And it sort of has grown my own community of people that I can speak to about these things a little more substantially.

Pihkala: Yeah, thanks for sharing all of that. Joanna Macy's name has been mentioned in this podcast also, several times. And we are planning to do an explicit episode on this Work That Reconnects that you mentioned. It's the name of the method she and others developed. And that's been hugely influential for my work also. And many regard Macy as an elder in all work around eco emotions, or whatever we call them. Or just, you know, our emotional response to what's happening in the world. There was the threat of nuclear war in the 1980s. And she and some others were also active in facing the effective response to that.

Moser: Yeah. Yeah, I think she's one of the crucial elders. At least for very pragmatic, kind of, you know, work. Like how do we work with these emotions? Right? How do we not sit alone with these emotions, but connect with others? And are held in community in deep emotional grief. And working through that. And by that, I don't mean to, you know, get rid of it, right? But to honor it. And to find a renewed energy and power to go back in the world and engage with it as opposed to be paralyzed and disappearing. And she has been probably one of the most influential people in my work.

The other one is Bill Plotkin. And I know you have also mentioned him in your podcast before. His work, I think, in many ways gets at the root causes of why we have something called climate change in the first place. And so that, to me, has been very, very influential as well. Yeah.

Doherty: Yeah. So this all gets to this idea of eco psychology. These are all this idea of really revisioning what our sense of psychology even is in relation to being on the planet. Yeah. So I want to stay a little bit just for a moment with the science communication piece. Only because we have listeners. It's a paradox, I think, Susi. There [are] way more resources and support for science teachers, or researchers or your students who do, you know, who are feeling, obviously, all the feelings that are coming with this work.

But, even now, as I tell people and students, you still kind of have to be a pathfinder, you know. So what I'm hearing from you is that even now. Even at your level, it still can be lonely at times. And you're still having to be a bit of a pathfinder. But I think that's just an important thing for listeners to take in. And that kind of could be a segue to our adaptive mind conversation in a moment. But it sounds like that's just the nature of it still. It's better than it was 20 years ago, but still difficult.

Moser: Yeah, I think we're in a, you know, we're really trying to change culture. Right? When you think about the scientific or technical professions, it is very uncommon to bring in emotion, your whole selves into the conversation, into your work, right? We're supposed to be, you know, heads on a stick. But that's just not who we are. And, in fact … all the conversation we've had in recent years about storytelling is all about that, right? It is actually about re-embodying ourselves into a larger fabric of who we are as people. What our identity is. How it changes through the experiences we have in life. And how it is held in the community.

And so, you know, science has essentially asked us to make it a professional pride to dissociate from ourselves. And, you know, I mean, in your profession, Thomas, you would call it pathological. But we've made it a matter of credibility to be that emotion free. And I think what we're beginning to see is, it's to the detriment of the mental health and well being of the people doing the work.

Doherty: Yeah.

Moser: So, you know, I don't think emotion disqualifies me as a scientist, you know. I think it is, the more repressed our emotions are, the more they actually influence us unconsciously. And actually, that makes for bad science.

Doherty: Yeah.

Moser: So I think the more self aware and clear we are about, you know, how else we are impacted by what we know, the more effective we can be in analysis. And in synthesis of an understanding. Scientific understanding. And also more effective in communication.

Pihkala: That's great wisdom, I think. And really, really important. And there's such a range of issues here. There's this whole idea of Western science, especially since the Enlightenment period. And, all the complexities [that] also revolve around gender. Through these developments when reason was started to be seen as masculine and good, and emotion was started to be seen as feminine and weak. There's [a] very long history of ideas and developments here behind this. Just to give the listeners a clue of the scope of this huge work.

So there's both writings about communication. And how it's important to pay not only attention to emotions in general, but also to the difficult ones. And that was really rare in the 2000s. And when I started my work on difficulty, eco emotions, that was very important source material. But you've also done, because of your expertise in adaptation, sort of field work. There's some articles where you're actually, you know, drawing on people's experiences that you have met. For example, along the coastlines. And there's the philosophical things around concepts of hope and despair, for example. So that's something that I highly appreciate in any scientist or thinker. In this case you, but just wanted to give some glimpses to the readers about the obvious thing.

Doherty: Yeah. And I feel less lonely when we're having these conversations too. Because I think about this stuff all the time as well. You know, Susi, early on in our planning, you talked about some different emotions that you were curious about. And, you know, this adaptive mind. This idea of how do we kind of create this world that we need? Do you want to talk about some specific emotions? Or some specific things you want to kind of get into? You know, we have some time to chat. Let's see, what are you curious about?

Moser: Yeah, so maybe I could just, you know, first start by just saying what I mean by the adaptive mind just so that people understand where that comes from. So, you know, besides the, as Panu just mentioned, besides the work in communication, I've done a lot of work in adaptation, mostly in coastal areas. And, you know, early on, there were a handful of us working on this. And around 2006, after Al Gore's movie came out, all of a sudden, people realized we cannot just mitigate climate change. We actually also just have to live with some of the now unavoidable consequences. So lots of people started to enter the field of adaptation around 2005, 2006, when that came out.

But 10 years later, I started to hear people at conferences, just take me aside and say, you know, let's have a drink, whatever. And they would just say, and how do you deal with this all the time? You know, people started to just have confidence, basically asked me how to emotionally cope with what they see every single day. I mean, others have said this before, but it's essentially, when your day job is to look the apocalypse in the face every single day, how do you cope with that? And then people started to say, well, it's not just that, but you know, I need to give talks to people who are traumatized from the most recent flooding or from the most recent wildfire. What trauma informed work in adaptation? You know, people started to talk.

Yeah, and it's deeply interconnected with all the intersectional challenges that communities face. Race and poverty. And you know, the whole rest of it, right? And so those people were really looking for skills to help this deep transformative shift that we need to go through. And that is both a shift socially, economically, but it's also in our relationship to the environment, right? And how we relate to each other. So out of that sort of set of needs, I basically said, you know, I want to work on that. I want to think about what are support mechanisms? What are skill building opportunities we can create? Because you don't learn that in engineering school or in planning school. Or, you know, if you're a climate scientist, you don't get the lowdown on how to avoid burnout, right?

Anyway, those are the kinds of contexts that lots of people in the scientific and technical communities didn't have the skills to deal with this constant traumatic and transformative change that people are facing. So out of that, basically, was birthed this idea of the adaptive mind. And it's a project that is aimed at skill building. At building those capacities. And, you know, one of the first things that I come across again and again, in this work is, first people just arrive exhausted. They're just completely fried. And so much of what we do in the beginning of our training cycle, is to help people just reconnect with themselves. Reconnect with each other. Reconnect to nature. Just as a baseline. Just to kind of, you know, get to a place where they can even take in learning about new skills. You can't learn when you're completely fried.

And the next step in that often then is about having that community hold space for climate emotions. And it can be anything, right? Grief is often in there probably dominantly. But also anger. And anxiety. And fear for what happens to the children. You know, whatever. So it's a wide range of experiences people face. And, you know, we basically, then hold that space for people to have that experience. And what inevitably happens is, when people actually have space for their emotions, they don't get stuck in them. They actually then are able to, you know, think clearly again, right? Coming back to the work of Joanna Macy. You see with new eyes. You have opportunities to connect with others.

And think differently about how do I address this more fundamentally than, you know, just putting one bandaid after another that just dries me up? So that's kind of, you know, what we're trying to do there. And yeah, so that climate emotions are and really holding space for that, with some skill is really essential in that work, because that's the part that no one gets.

Doherty: Yeah. I'm thinking of our episode with Scott Ordway. The composer who has been making music about the wildfires in his home. And his discussion. At least listeners can go to Season two, Episode 10. HIs discussion of how when we played that piece of music for the community, you know, that was damaged by the fires, how cathartic that was. And how healing that was. So that was an artistic take on a similar kind of coping.

Moser: Well, it's such a beautiful thing too to, you know, tap into things that are nonverbal, right? To get into a whole different part of our brains. To, you know, it taps parts of us much more easily than if I say, oh, would you like to, you know, express your grief? It's just, you know, it's much more difficult to do that in that way. Whereas music can take you there in like, two seconds, you know? So I think of imaginative ways of opening to a different future. I know, you've talked a lot with people about hope in your series of podcasts here. I always think, you know, if we can't imagine a better future, like, why bother with hope? I mean, right? You need to open that up. And art, other forms, all forms of art can help open that. So that's often another part of what we do in our adaptive mind work.

Doherty: Yeah. And I think meaning then comes out of this work, ultimately. You know, my life has some significance. Things start to make sense. I have a purpose. Do you see that, Susi, coming out in the process that you're describing. You know, how these kinds of emotional openings and space holdings, then allow people to start to have a sense of meaning. You know, repair their meaning making?

Moser: You know, it's actually in my experience, in this particular piece of the work, a central question. Many people don't burn out just because they haven't had a vacation in a while. Or because there had been too many disasters that they had to attend to. But they burn out because their work doesn't make sense anymore. You know, like, why should I bother and drain myself doing it with something that just feels completely irrelevant in light of the magnitude. And, you know, lots of that has to do with our very obscure and strange sense of self in Western society, right? As individuals, we are often thinking of ourselves only as individuals as opposed to part of a collective. That's certainly a big part of the problem of why we keep burning out.

But also, you know, so much of our work has become a very narrow and mechanistic way of fitting into a machine that we don't actually want to be part of. Right? It's the machine that actually creates all this problem in the first place. And, you know, like, imagine, for example, you're a sustainability director in an urban community. And your work is to try to build trust with, you know, underserved communities, marginalized communities, right? Your police department next door is hitting those same people with batons or worse, right? Like, it makes no sense to be part of that community. And yet, you want to help. You want to do something. So you need skills to navigate and change the system that you're in at the same time that you want to be effective and actually, in those interactions with people who are not trustful. Who is afraid for a very good reason.

So, anyway, those are the, you know, the kinds of real life situations that many people in my line of work find themselves in. And who just doesn't know how to address it. And the question of meaning is absolutely central. How do I bring myself at the deepest level to the repair work. To the restorative work. To the healing work that needs to happen on this planet?

Doherty: Yes. Well said. Well said.

Pihkala: Yes, truly. So and as you two know, meaning has been a very key concept in my work also. And perhaps, Thomas, we should do one episode explicitly on meaning and various takes on it. I don't mean any, you know, academic philosophical discussion. But the lived experiences of meaning. And sort of different types of meaning that are changing now. And some of them related, for example, to the felt significance of our work. Which Susi has commented [on] here.

So speaking of sticks and carrots. Which is a very simple metaphor for communication. It's not straightforward, but meaning can be an important carrot in that sense. Because if people see those people who are willing to try to face reality. And feel the emotions. And do things for the community. And the planet. If they see meaningfulness and a sense of meaning in those communities and people, that's going to be very motivating. And then, of course, what is needed is also pathways to become part of those communities. So that it's not an in-group, out-group thing. But does that spark something in your mind, Susi?

Moser: Well, I feel, you know, that's actually at the heart of what makes communication work, right? As opposed to just communicating and conveying a number of scientific facts, right? That's what I used to do. Sort of just, you know, can I find the best word possibly to convey the end of the world as we know it, you know? In some factoids that people can remember. Or that sticks in their minds.

But really, when you think about any talk, any moving event, or keynote, or whatever that you have heard it is when people are touched in their hearts. And their deepest own concerns about what is my life about? Why am I here? You know, and can you in some ways, connect to that part? Through story or, you know, whatever it is. And ask people to be in the world from that place. It's a very different proposition than how do I communicate, you know, certain parts per million. And the temperature curve, right? I am asking people to reconsider how do you want to be on this planet while you are here?

Doherty: Yeah.

Moser: And in my experience, I can tell them very frightening information and very uplifting information. And still have people walk out with hope when I have touched that place.

Doherty: Yeah.

Moser: If I haven't done that, it was a lost opportunity.

Doherty: So for our listeners who are listening, I mean, we're, again, this fly on the wall in this conversation. I think one of the takeaways is that … working with meaning is like swimming in deep water. You know, we have it and then we lose it. And then we're okay temporarily losing our meaning because this work is difficult. And it is all, you know, irrational. Like you say the world is absurd. And so we have these periods of losing meaning.

But then if we can go to the emotions. And be with other people. And share these emotions, then that kind of cycles us back, probably to the meaning. So I think, for young listeners in particular, you know, as Susi and Panu can verify, you know, we lose our meaning. We think we have it and we try to work and it becomes difficult. We get burned out. And then we go through that time. And then we recover our meaning, right? So that's a takeaway for the listeners, right? All these cycles.

Moser: Can I build on that?

Doherty: Sure.

Moser: So you said, it's absurd. I don't think the world is absurd.

Doherty: Fair enough.

Moser: So for me, when we temporarily might think that way, I think that's the moment when the frame through which we look at the world is too small to hold it. To actually make sense of it. We are invited in that moment, into a bigger frame. So when I'm in a bigger way to understand what's happening, than even this descent, you know. Or even this falling apart of Western society makes sense to me. For other people who, you know, are still holding on to that particular frame, it's terrible. And it makes no sense. You know, why bother living, right? But when you see it in the larger frame of say, this is an archetypal movement, where smaller self definitions have to necessarily crumble, make space for something different, right? And you then discover something new.

So it's not even remake, recovering, meaning. It is making a whole new meaning. Like you come out differently after that. And I think we as a society. I hope we as humanity will come out very different. When we are through this transformational rough spot that we're in at the moment. And, you know, hopefully get to being a very different way on the planet. I mean, as Joanna Macy would say, from a life defying or life destroying way of being to a life supporting. Life is restored. Life enhancing force on the planet. I always love to think, you know, can we keep the Anthropocene to a really, really thin layer? Going back to my geological training, right? Like, can we keep that to a really thin layer? And then become a force on the planet that actually helps to rebuild life?

Doherty: Yeah.

Moser: I don't know. As opposed to destroying it.

Pihkala: That's a great reason. As it has been said, we need visions. And things that we can hope for. That certainly is one that I'm in for.

Moser: Well, we're supposed to be, you know, Homo Sapiens. Sapiens. The white wise ones, right? We're not anywhere near the wise ones. So I think it's time for us to still become the species we could become.

Doherty: That's a great place to close out today. I mean, on this growthful vision. I do want to, we'll share some of the links. And to that documentary, you mentioned Susi. And to some of your work. And I could easily see having you back again for another time to continue this conversation. Obviously, there's so much we could go into. But I hope the listeners got something out of today. Both young listeners. Science folks. Folks working on adaptation helping communities to live in the world of climate change. And I really appreciate your work, Susi, and I wish you the best. And I hope you hope you have success in the next little bit here.

Moser: Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be with both of you. And yes, to be continued.

Doherty: Alright, I'll take care of yourselves. Bye bye.

Panu Pihkala: Warm thanks, Susi.
Doherty: The Climate Change and Happiness Podcast is a self-funded volunteer effort. Please support us so we can keep bringing you messages of coping and thriving. See the donate page at climatechangeandhappiness.com.