Climate Psychology

This book investigates the psycho-social phenomenon which is society’s failure to respond to climate change. It analyses the non-rational dimensions of our collective paralysis in the face of worsening climate change and environmental destruction, exploring the emotional, ethical, social, organizational and cultural dynamics to blame for this global lack of action. 

The book features eleven research projects from four different countries and is divided in two parts, the first highlighting novel methodologies, the second presenting new findings. Contributors to the first part show how a ‘deep listening’ approach to research can reveal the anxieties, tensions, contradictions, frames and narratives that contribute to people’s experiences, and the many ways climate change and other environmental risks are imagined through metaphor, imagery and dreams. 

Using detailed interview extracts drawn from politicians, scientists and activists as well as ordinary people, the second part of the book examines the many different ways in which we both avoid and square up to this gathering disaster, and the many faces of alarm, outrage, denial and indifference this involves.

Paul Hoggett is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of West England, UK. Paul is the co-founder of the Climate Psychology Alliance, is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and has worked as a group relations consultant over many years.

“The psychology of climate change is a long-neglected, yet vital, subject of study. This book brings together the most important thinkers and reports some of their most fascinating and, let's be honest, frightening conclusions. Sure to have a major impact, it goes a long way towards answering the most important question of our age: What explains our collective paralysis in the face of such an enormous threat to our future?” (Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra and author of Reqium for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change) 

“A valuable and timely addition to climate psychology, a newly emerging field whose subject is how people are relating to climate change. The authors use qualitative research methods to explore people’s conscious - and not so conscious - feelings about climate change, with groups studied fascinatingly including climate scientists, activists and also children. I believe reading these papers helps us understand some of our own mixed and varied feelings about climate change. Paul Hoggett, in his introduction, usefully summarises the psycho-social approach taken by the authors and he clarifies differences in the qualitative research models they have developed and applied. The authors share in common a deep interest in peoples' subjective experience and a deep sympathy for the difficulty in facing climate change. A thoroughly good read, accessible and highly recommended.” (Sally Weintrobe, psychoanalyst, climate psychologist and editor of Engaging with Climate Change (2013))