Feeling Climate Change

In this fifth and final episode, Dr. Davidson makes the case that we have the capacity to address the climate emergency despite our many obstacles. Among the key ingredients, she argues, can be found at the emotional level. She identifies the key emotional requisites for sustained climate action, particularly collective action, and how such emotional requisites can be cultivated.

 In this episode, Dr. Davidson moves beyond the politics of denial to explore its human face. In what ways is denial an emotional reaction, and what are the life experiences that shape those emotional reactions? This exploration is supplemented with segments of interviews with climate deniers.

Will societies mount a successful campaign to confront the climate emergency? And how do emotions feature in this critical question? Dr. Davidson provides important background to the rest of the series by offering an interdisciplinary journey through the study of emotions, in order to better understand how they influence our behavior, including our responses to climate change.

 In this episode, Dr. Davidson discusses the importance of emotions to the impacts of and responses to extreme events, which are already increasing in frequency and intensity due to our changing climate. Then Dr. Davidson takes listeners to Merritt, British Columbia, where a climate-attributed triple disaster of extreme heat, fires and floods landed in 2021. Two graduate students join her to discuss their research on youth experiences, and place attachment. This episode is supplemented with segments of interviews with residents.

 Dr. Davidson discusses the many ways in which our emotions can operate to encourage inaction in response to climate change, including three inaction profiles, each defined by unique emotional pathways: apathy, withdrawal, and just being ‘stuck.’

Short overview of the purpose and episode content for the podcast series