Facing Climate Anxiety: Practical Tools for Hope with Dr. Susie Burke

This is a surprisingly uplifting conversation about climate change—yes, really. I spoke with psychologist Dr Susie Burke on managing climate distress (anger, sadness, anxiety) while staying hopeful, because unchecked, these feelings often lead to apathy just when we need action most.

After recent events, this episode feels especially timely. With years of experience in climate psychology, Dr. Susie offers practical insights for managing eco-anxiety and other intense emotions, reminding us that positive change is happening elsewhere and within our reach. This episode is a breath of fresh air for anyone overwhelmed by constant climate news.

In this episode, we cover:

The perception gap: why more people care about climate change than you might think

The mental health impact of climate change and why eco-anxiety is normal

Strategies to cope with climate emotions, from small practical steps to collective action

How shifting business and consumer behavior can drive more change than waiting for governments

Why we are the first generation with a real shot at creating a sustainable world

How to support children in understanding and feeling empowered about environmental issues

Key Quotes:

“Climate distress isn’t just anxiety—it’s a whole mix of emotions like guilt, anger, and sadness that are natural responses to a real crisis.”

“We have never been closer to achieving a sustainable world. For the first time, sustainability means a healthy life for all and an end to environmental destruction. We can make this happen.”

More About Dr. Susie Burke

Check out her website

More about Hannah Ritchie

Author of Not the End of the World, check out her website and books

More about The Conceivable Future

Written by Meghan Elizabeth Kallman and Josephine Ferorelli, their website is

Tedx Talk: Changing the World: Why it Fails and What Works

By Winnifred Louis,

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Transcript

Brianne

0:00:00

Kia ora kaitiaki and welcome to Now That's What I Call Green. I'm your host, Brianne West, an environmentalist and entrepreneur trying to get you as excited about our planet as I am. I'm all about creating a scientific approach to making the world a better place, without the judgment and making it fun. And of course, we will be chatting about some of the most amazing creatures we share our

Brianne

0:00:24

planet with. So if you are looking to navigate through everything green or not so green, you have come to the right place. Kia ora, welcome back. Now I've pushed this interview forward. We were going to launch 2025 with this episode.

Brianne

0:00:40

It is with Dr. Susie Burke. She's talking about how we can remain positive and hopeful in light of pretty overwhelming evidence to the contrary in many respects, right? There's all sorts of things going on around the world and there's a lot of negativity. And of course, with the election last week, I thought we'd pull it forward because I see a lot of people who are genuinely devastated and understandably so.

Brianne

0:01:07

But I choose to believe that there is still positivity. And I do get asked all the time how I remain positive and again, knowing as much as I do, and I know a bit more about climate science and everything else than probably your average person does because I spend a lot of time researching about it so I can tell you about it. And it's pretty grim, but I am also still hopeful. So I guess there's a couple of reasons that I stay hopeful.

Brianne

0:01:31

One, we know we can solve these problems because we have all of the solutions and that's number one, right? We have all the solutions. Most of them are financially viable. Renewable energy, for example, is already cheaper and easier and better than bloody coal is.

Brianne

0:01:46

It makes no financial sense to mine oil and gas in many respects rather than just put renewables up. So at this point, the pro-mining crew are kind of just doing it out of spite. And at the end of the day, spite only goes so far. These guys are led by money. The facts that these are cheaper

Brianne

0:02:05

will ensure there is a market pressure on these sorts of things. That's number one. We have these solutions and they are good solutions. And we've also done this before. We've solved the problems before,

Brianne

0:02:15

like the ozone hole, for example. Second one is something that's gonna come up in this interview, which is that way, way, way, way more people are working on this problem than you can possibly imagine. It's something that Dr. Susie calls the perception gap.

Brianne

0:02:26

She goes into it a little bit more, so I won't now, but this interview made me feel a lot better. You are not alone in caring about what we are doing to people and planets. So many people do and so many people are working on it, just more than you think. And then finally, I suppose the other reason is I've never once believed that the solutions we need will come from governments.

Brianne

0:02:47

We need legislation, obviously, we need regulations, but governments are just so slow and they just don't move and they just keep proving their apathy, right? I understand that government is complicated and there's lobbyists and there's all sorts of interests that I'm sure we can't even possibly fathom. All of it driven by greed a lot of the time. So they don't move.

Brianne

0:03:08

And this is why I keep saying that the only thing that will really move the needle is if we change business. And the way to change business is consumer demand and consumers demanding better from their brands. We have so much power, so much more power than you can possibly imagine and if we use that, I think we change the world a bit quicker than we think and I know a lot of people will be anxious. Anxiousness tends to lead to apathy so that's unhelpful. Let's not get

Brianne

0:03:33

apathetic because there is absolutely still hope, loads of opportunity to make a change, loads of opportunity to prevent further climate change and environmental degradation, and of course, protects people who are going to be most marginalised under this change,

Brianne

0:03:49

which is of course, people of colour, immigrants, women, yeah. Anyway, enjoy the interview, it genuinely cheered me up, and I get how you're feeling, it's totally valid,

Brianne

0:04:00

but don't turn it into sitting there and doom scrolling, because there is absolutely still hope. So I'm very excited to have Dr. Susie Burke with me today. So Dr. Burke is a psychologist who has made it her mission to help people understand and handle the mental load of climate change. Her background includes working in disaster response and environmental issues, giving

Brianne

0:04:20

a first-hand look at how the climate crisis impacts mental health. From developing strategies to cope with climate anxiety and eco grief to finding ways for people to build resilience. She is a leading voice on this. I am so excited and really appreciate you being here. So welcome.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:04:37

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Brianne

0:04:44

First question, or the worst question, tell me about you, how you got to where you are and what it is you spend your day doing? Gives people context.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:04:47

Okay, thank you. Well, I'm a psychologist and I work in Central Victoria. And for many years, for about 17 years, I was working at the Australian Psychological Society. I'm not currently there, but for a long, happy 17 years, I was working on climate change and disasters. So when people would ask me, why is a psychologist working on climate change? I'd say, well, it's for three reasons. One is because climate change is caused by human behaviour, and as experts in human behaviour, that's something we're interested in.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:05:17

And the second thing was that climate change has an impact on people's psychological health and well-being. Of course, that's something that we're interested in. And the third reason was because all of the changes that are required to restore a safe climate involve changes in human behaviour, whether that be at an individual level or a community level or an international level, it all requires changes in human behaviour.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:05:42

Ta-da! That's our area of interest and expertise again. So I thought it was fairly obvious why psychologists should be working on that. And so when I was there, I developed a number of resources with my colleagues on a range of different topics. So some of those topics were around the impact or the mental health and psychological impact of climate change. And I was also working in disasters as well, so that was often looking at the mental health and psychological impact of extreme weather event disasters, for example.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:06:16

But I was also spending a lot of time looking at how people can overcome psychological barriers to engaging with the topic of climate change. And sometimes, the reason why we have a barrier to engaging with it is because of the emotions that we feel about the topic of climate change, which can sometimes tempt us to slip away and distract ourselves, which we can do endlessly with other things in life. And there are, of course, a number of other barriers that are not so individual that

Dr. Susie Burke

0:06:47

might be more structural in communities that are barriers to taking action on climate change. So I looked at that as well. And more recently, I've been working with a couple of developmental psychologists, and we've been writing a number of articles on the psychological effects of climate change on children and young people and adults. So we've sort of become a bit more specialised looking at coping and impacts of climate change on people.

Brianne

Is it a growing field or is it a fairly well-established field now or is it still in infancy?

Dr. Susie Burke

0:07:12

I think it's growing. When I first started working in this, I was surprised to be a much-cited author in 2010, I think, when we wrote, together with some colleagues, we wrote an article on the psychological impacts of climate change.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:07:37

Now I feel like everyone's talking about it, which is good. And when people ask whether levels of anxiety increasing, well, of course, levels of knowledge and awareness and therefore concern and therefore anxiety are, of course, going to increase. And because the problem is an escalating problem, of course, we're going to expect that to continue to be the case.

Brianne

0:08:02

So what is it manifesting like if there are people listening who don't feel climate anxiety, very jealous of those people, what are the problems that people are, I guess, what are you coming across when you talk to people?

Dr. Susie Burke

0:08:16

Okay, well there's lots of different terms that are used, so let's unpack them a little bit. So climate emotions is a word I see popping up in the literature a lot now. That's a nice broad term. There's lots of words that have got anxiety in them like eco-anxiety or climate anxiety. There's one psychotherapist, Ro Randall, in the UK who prefers to use the term, or prefers that we use the term climate distress because that is kind of a bit more of a vague and general term that encompasses both guilt and anger and anxiety, which are all very much a part of it. So really, there is this broad number

Dr. Susie Burke

0:08:56

of terms. And some articles have been written really looking finely at the differences between this type of terms. But I'm not going to get so caught up in that. It actually doesn't really bother me too much. But I did think I would briefly refer to a scoping review that was done in 2021. So some researchers, Coffey et al., did this paper where they looked at 1,500 papers on ecoanxiety or various other names for it and looked to find the really high-quality ones that were really studying it so that they could help to define the terms and understand the scope of it. So what they were doing was they were operationalising the term eco-anxiety.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:09:38

And what they argued was that it's a broad range of negative emotions and negative physical symptoms that are associated with climate change and other environmental threats. And so the broad range of negative emotions would include worry and anxiety and grief and guilt and anger, a whole lot of others, helplessness and hopelessness and all those sorts of negative emotions.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:10:03

And the negative physical symptoms would be things like feeling sick and panic attacks, and being paralysed or feeling paralysed. So that was how it was defined, or can be usefully defined. But it's also useful to think about, well, what is anxiety? And to what degree is it pathological?

Dr. Susie Burke

0:10:23

So anxiety is a future-oriented stance. It's when we're looking into the future and we're thinking, is there a threat there? So it's an appraisal of a threat, the climate crisis, but it's also a motivator. It's something that can motivate people to respond appropriately to a threat, to the threat. So it's kind of quite a good thing.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:10:45

So it's rational, it's appropriate, and it's deserved to feel some modicum of anxiety in response to the climate crisis. So it's best to consider it in a continuum and therefore it's not pathological, but at the higher levels of anxiety that can be associated with poor mental health and that can be hard for people. There can be, you know, some suffering in that. So does that help to explain the terms and the scope of it?

Brianne

Yes, it's a lot bigger, yes. Calling it eco-anxiety doesn't really encompass the fact that actually sometimes it's just really sad or enraging. So, climate emotions, okay, or climate distress, I quite like that.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:11:23

Climate distress, climate emotions, yeah, yes. Yeah. So that's also interesting to think about. What's the extent of it, like how many people are feeling this? And often in the literature, the surveys will be looking at concern, climate concern, which can carry with it a level of distress. And so I always find it interesting to look at a paper that was written in Australia published

Dr. Susie Burke

0:11:53

in 2020. So that was the first year of the pandemic. We'd been locked down for a long time. And GDP was down 7%. The focus was very much on COVID and people's levels of concern about climate change were at a record high.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:12:12

So that's telling. Interesting. Yeah. And the figures are generally sit around the mid 70% up to the mid 80% of people who experience very or fairly high concern. And in this particular one, it went up to about 80,

Dr. Susie Burke

0:12:33

high 80s, 88% of people, if they'd had a direct experience of something that they considered to be climate change. So that might have been them having been caught up in an extreme weather event, disaster. We have lots of them. And there was also, interestingly, a 10% difference between men and women.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:12:50

So people will often say, well, who are the people who are most vulnerable to feeling anxious? And it seems to be in the literature that women edge up a little bit over men. Young girls more so than young boys. You know, I'm talking about teenagers, young adults. People who are most aware of the climate threat would have higher levels of climate distress,

Dr. Susie Burke

0:13:16

so that would be people who might be scientists or activists or other environmentally-oriented workers. Yeah. Yeah, so women directly impacted and those who are most aware tend to have the highest. And then there's been lots of studies that have been done on... Oh, actually, no, before I tell you that, whilst I was waiting for you to join the call,

Dr. Susie Burke

0:13:42

I found a very interesting article. I was following up my new favorite author, Hannah Ritchie, who's a climate writer, and she was referring to articles about people's perceptions of other people's levels of concern. Because one of the things that people often feel anxious about is a misunderstanding of how many other people care deeply about the climate crisis and are doing something about it and would back, you know, good, strong climate policies.

Brianne

As in they feel they're on their own?

Dr. Susie Burke

0:14:12

They feel they're on their own, yeah. It's called the perception gap and it's a really common phenomena and we misunderstand how many other people do care. So in this study that was published this year, 2024 study, it was a big one of people's climate change beliefs. 59,000 people across a lot of countries, 63 countries were surveyed for their beliefs. And a belief in climate change was that it was human-caused, that it was tantamount to

Dr. Susie Burke

0:14:43

an emergency, that it would have a terrible impact on humanity. So with that comes a fair level of concern and distress. And 86% of people said yes, they had high concerns. So that's in that mid-80s range. But then another study that also found comparable ones also looked to see how much people were thinking that other people were also sharing those concerns, and the figures were a lot

Dr. Susie Burke

0:15:09

less. It's a bit of a problem because it increases your own anxiety, like, oh, I'm alone. It decreases your preparedness, perhaps, to raise the topic and talk about it and share your concerns with other people because you might be thinking other people don't care.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:15:23

And also it's problematic because if politicians are also suffering from the same perception gap, which of course they would because they are also humans, then they're going to be misunderstanding how much support they would have for good, serious climate policies. And that's problematic.

Brianne

0:15:43

That is so interesting. Not at all surprising, because when you said, hey, you know, between the mid-70s, mid-80s, I thought, but is that people just being like, yeah, I'm worried about it, but you know, meh. But you're talking about quite serious concerns. That's an entirely different conversation.

Brianne

0:15:58

So then the next question, of course, comes up is, but you may have already answered it in fairness, is why is it not a bigger piece of action? And maybe the answer is because everyone's looking at each other saying, oh, I don't want to bring it up because I don't think you care and I feel stupid. Because when I do speaking events, I absolutely tone down a lot of my thoughts and concerns about environmental destruction in general and particularly climate change, because I do feel that I will be one of the few people in the room who is worried about it.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:16:28

Yes, yes. Well, okay, well, you've said a lot of things just now. I'm going to address all of them. I'm just going to start by telling you about another one of my favourite writers. I've got a lot of favourite climate writers.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:16:38

George Marshall. He's also in the UK. And he used to be the sort of activist that would tie himself to coal trucks and be a real activist. But more recently, his activism has come to be a challenge to himself to talk about the threat of climate change every single day with somebody.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:17:02

And he never cheats. So if on one day he's actually giving a talk to 15,000 people, he doesn't think, I'm covered for the next 15,000 days. He treats that as one person and heads off the next day to make sure he's talking about it. Because breaking the conspiracy silence around climate change is one of the most important things you can do because you're breaking that perception gap and you're letting other

Dr. Susie Burke

0:17:26

people know that you might, like them, share their concerns and that climate change is a real threat and therefore it's very legitimate to be talking about it and to be doing something about it. So that would be one way of responding to that. The other thing is that when we look at how people are coping with climate change, there are three strategies that we get people to use. So there's emotion-focused coping strategies,

Dr. Susie Burke

0:17:54

problem-focused coping, and meaning-focused coping. And I'll talk about all of them, but emotion-focused coping is the things that we do to manage the emotions. So the uncomfortable feelings in our body, which are where emotions are felt. And so that might be things like breathing exercises or having a nice chat with a friend or talking about how we're feeling or having a cry or moving our body or it's a whole host of things. This is what psychologists have spent a lot of time doing with people is teaching them strategies to be able to manage uncomfortable feelings. And then problem-focused coping strategies are the things that we do.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:18:29

So we do things with our body. So the things we do with our legs and our arms and our words are doing things to reduce the threat of climate change. That's mitigation. That's the word that gets used in the climate field to talk about things that are reducing carbon emissions and sequestering carbon. And I mean, those things can also be adaptation things as well, preparing yourself for the possibility of extreme weather events and things like that. But I particularly like people to focus on the reduced carbon emissions and sequestering

Dr. Susie Burke

0:19:00

carbon as a first priority. So that might be things like being involved in a group and campaigning to blockade the coal, the second largest coal port in the world. I'm just flagging something that I'm going to be doing with some of my friends in a few weeks in Newcastle. Yes, we're going to be rowing canoes out into the shipping lanes and blocking the coal ships

Dr. Susie Burke

0:19:26

from taking coal out to other countries. So those sorts of things. So that's a particular type of activism, but it also might be being involved in a group that's trying to get some grants for getting solar panels on people's roofs and things like that, anything that's about reducing carbon emissions. So that's problem-focused coping, the things that you do to reduce the problem that's causing

Dr. Susie Burke

0:19:48

the anxiety. And then the third one is meaning-focused coping. So that's the way in which we use our thinking to think differently about the problem of climate change so that we can activate some hope. And in fact, having a sense of hope is kind of a really urgent thing to do.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:20:10

Urgent optimism is what one writer, oh, that woman I talked about before, Hannah Ritchie, that's one of the phrases that she uses in her book, "'Not the End of the World", which I highly recommend. It's a good title too, isn't it?

Dr. Susie Burke

0:20:25

“Not the End of the World”. So going back to the thing that you said earlier, one of the things that we do when we're getting people to think about meaning-focused coping is to look around at all of the millions of people around the planet who are actually actively working on solving the problem of climate change, of which there are millions. But they might not just be in front of your nose, so sometimes you have to save some of your time that you might be spending on following

Dr. Susie Burke

0:20:54

geopolitical unfolding disasters in the world at the moment and save yourself from that and go and use some of that time to go and look for some of the amazing things that are happening around the world. And one of the things that Hannah Ritchie is writing about in Not the End of the World is that when we look at the large data sets, she works in an organisation that looks at the world in data, so these massive data sets.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:21:18

On most measures of human well-being, we have improved dramatically in all of these measures in the last 50 years. It's really important to remember that because they don't turn up in the news. It's not very newsy to say that, you know, a hundred and… or something numbers that a hundred and twenty-eight thousand people every day for the last 25 years have come out of extreme poverty. Like, they're sort of funny numbers and they're not numbers that get cited in the news,

Dr. Susie Burke

0:21:45

but actually, those are amazing things. And so, what she's arguing is that this generation, and when I say this generation, I mean, you and I look like, you know, might be the same generation, but it also includes all the generations that are alive at the moment. We might be the first generations to actually achieve a sustainable world. And that's actually a really exciting thought because the world

Dr. Susie Burke

0:22:07

has never, ever been sustainable because sustainability means a healthy life for everyone on the planet now, plus an end to environmental destruction. And we've never been able to achieve both of those at the same time. So in previous years, when we perhaps haven't been as environmentally destructive, we've had 50% of children dying before the age of five. So we've never had healthy lives for all people.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:22:37

So that's kind of an exciting thought, and it's borne out by these trends in large data which shows that we are continually making these enormous improvements in well-being of so many things on the planet. So that means millions of people around the planet are actually working on environmental solutions. Just maybe not in front of our noses.

Brianne

You are probably one of the first people to ever talk about this as an opportunity, if you like. The opportunity to make our world a sustainable one for the first time ever and I've genuinely never thought about it like that before but it's actually something that's broken through the, I'm not nihilistic, but something I don't say very often as I'm just not sure if we're going to get it together enough.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:23:10

Yeah, yeah. I know but how exciting to think that we could be the generations that actually generations, that perhaps she's the first to achieve a sustainable world. The other interesting thing to consider too, because often what will come up will be the

Dr. Susie Burke

0:23:42

question about young people's reproductive choices. That was going to be one of my questions. Oh, well, let's jump in there. Yeah. Should I have a child? She also makes the point, no, it's not her, it's these other two American writers, Josephine Ferrarelli and Megan Cullman, who wrote a book called The Conceivable Future,

Dr. Susie Burke

0:24:08

and it's all about people's reproductive choices. And they make the argument that there is no child that is a newborn now who will ever have as big a carbon footprint as its parents do. And so that's a really interesting thought, either because we've continued, which we will, to move on to zero-carbon economies, and we are inevitably going to be doing that.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:24:34

We just need to hurry along. Or because of collapse, which means a vast reduction in the energy that we've got available to us. But we have a massively smaller, even though we have these generous lifestyles, we have smaller carbon footprints than our grandparents did who were heavily reliant on coal for all of their heating and cooling. So those sorts of statistics are a fascinating way of reconsidering it. And

Dr. Susie Burke

0:25:05

I mean, they also go and argue that, you know, we need to be careful that we don't internalise the burden of guilt of having a child, whereas that guilt should really be laid at the feet of the fossil fuel industries that are continuing to extract and, you know, emit carbon, and the politicians who enable those fossil fuel industries, because there's a number of excellent low-carbon or zero-carbon solutions to producing energy that have been proven to be able to be 24-hour sustainable. Yeah, there's a lot of PR around them that they're not there yet, but it's just nonsense.

Dr Susie Burke

0:25:45

Yeah.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:25:46

And that's an interesting point, yes. And that therefore, so you have to be careful you don't, yes, you're having an internalised guilt and also it's really important, this comes up around anxiety as well, it's really important to not make the mistake of putting too much importance on trying to be impeccable yourself. You are not the problem. The problem is a system that's based on extraction and injustice or inequality, and that's the

Dr. Susie Burke

0:26:14

system that we need to be focusing on. In order to change the system, that's politics. Politics is the activities that you do together with other people to change a system. It's not who you vote for or what you believe, it's the things that you do to change the system. And that's the problem, not whether you should have one child or not have six children or

Dr. Susie Burke

0:26:38

things like that.

Brianne

Yeah, guilt is a totally redundant emotion. It doesn't help, it makes you feel terrible, it doesn't make you do anything. I don't know, I don't think it's the greatest motivator. And it's also completely misplaced, because you're right, we should be throwing it at the CEO of Shell.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:26:50

Yes.

Brianne

0:26:51

It's all well and good to say, don't feel guilty and here are some coping mechanisms. What are some super practical things you tell people to do if you are, because you do definitely have, well I do, good and bad days. Perhaps I read an article the other day that they think ocean collapse will happen as soon as 2047. Being an ocean lover, I mean that's distressing for everybody, but that's particularly, those

Brianne

0:27:13

sorts of things are particularly distressing for me. It absolutely ruins my whole day. The obvious answer is don't read them, but I do think we should have an understanding of what's going on. So if that's not an option, how do you prevent reading stuff like that, which is horrifying, to becoming this super negative thing that weighs on you and prevents you from doing

Brianne

0:27:34

anything but also just gnaws away? I appreciate exercise and those sorts of things helps, but is there anything else that you found particularly useful?

Dr. Susie Burke

0:27:42

Well, just on that particular example that you gave, Hannah Ritchie does have a very good chapter in there on oceans and fishing. And she does directly address some of those recent articles and the way in which they're reported and has quite some to say about them. So follow that up.

Brianne

0:28:03

I will. And we'll put it in the show notes too.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:28:04

That would be your meaning focus to coping and stress. So, what I'm hearing you saying is that it feels important to have some knowledge and to be staying abreast of things, and we pick this up from Hannah Ritchie, reading stuff that is accurately reported. Which is hard to do. Which is hard to do, yeah. And also, we know that our bodies, you know, the distress in our bodies, the discomfort

Dr. Susie Burke

0:28:43

in our bodies can sometimes tell us, enough, I think I need to take a break now. And that it's quite okay at times to put down tools. I mean, it's why the weekend was invented, really. It was because we don't do very well if we just work and worry and stress about things and that we need to have a break. And so putting down tools isn't giving up, it's just taking a break and turning towards

Dr. Susie Burke

0:29:07

things that are psychologically restorative. So those are things like being in nature or spending time in the very world that you feel so concerned about and love so much. So being able to enjoy it and to value what remains. And I mean, there's a lot of literature on the psychological restoration that we can get from being in nature, whether it's being in the sea or whether it's being in a forest

Dr. Susie Burke

0:29:31

or a river or in a desert or whatever, or just sitting and watching a little bird in your birdbath. So those sorts of things. And it is really important to keep remembering to turn towards the very thing that you love so much, which is the natural world. I mean, that's not everybody's motivation. It doesn't actually have to be. It's enough to just be motivated for ourselves, humans. And then the other things are talking about

Dr. Susie Burke

0:29:59

your concerns and sharing your feelings with other people and having people that you can do that with, this is an enormous solace for people because it validates and normalises the distress that you're feeling. Plus, we call it a stress- reducing conversation when you talk to somebody else. That's a way of being able to regulate yourself emotionally by sharing your concerns with somebody who's soothing and able to, yes, communicate that sort of connection and an interest. And that can be very soothing. So there's those strategies

Dr. Susie Burke

0:30:37

as well. And even though you said it has to be more than just moving your body, moving your body is actually an enormously useful way of moving stress hormones through your body. And even if you've not got much time, but you just shake your booty. I'm just standing here, shaking my booty.

Brianne

A one-minute dance party?

Dr. Susie Burke

And doing that, you know, can be a way of being able to move your body. And anybody

Dr. Susie Burke

0:31:03

that's done any work on dealing with anxiety or therapy will have surely heard about how the human body is set up to develop a stress response as though we're being threatened by a saber-toothed tiger, and that if there's no saber-toothed tiger to fight or to flee from and no village to return to after you've got away successfully or slain the saber-toothed tiger to go and cheer and celebrate and laugh and cry and feast with, then you have to find something that is an approximate of that experience.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:31:39

So that's where the moving your body in some vigorous way or going and connecting with other people or going and having a feast with somebody or a laugh or a cry, which is what our human bodies were designed to do as a response to a threat.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:31:56

Once the threat had passed, then those are good things to do. Makes sense. Yes, and of course, the problem with a climate emergency is the threat doesn't, you can't kill it. The threat doesn't pass, it's still there the next day.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:32:06

But the stress in your body, you have a responsibility to be moving every day, so that the next day when you are out in the world and more stressors are happening that were still there the day before, and your stress is building up again, at least you cleared it, and then you clear it again that day, and you clear it again that day. Like hitting refresh on your computer, sort of. Yes, closing down your computer or turning it off at the end of the day.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:32:30

It's my partner who keeps telling me to do it.

Brianne

Oh no, it's so annoying because then it wants to update and then nothing works. We never turn it off, which is terrible also.

Dr. Susie Burke

Exactly. Imagine if we did that and we never went to bed because we thought, oh, but then I won't know where I was yesterday. But magically, we actually get quite quick at being able to get up and reorient ourselves in the morning.

Brianne

0:32:48

This is true.

Brianne

0:32:49

You're talking about community, really, about building a bunch of people around you, whether it's... And if you don't have those people around you, I suppose if your family feel differently or don't want to talk about it, and lots of people don't, I guess it's going out there and finding other people. And I know there's plenty of grassroots climate action clubs and things to join, isn't there, if you feel that way. But it's about putting people around you who aren't nihilistic or really fatalistic about it, but who are working towards making some kind of change, I suppose.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:33:08

Yeah, that's right. And Megan and Josephine, those two authors I talked about before who wrote The Conceivable Future, they talk about the big yes and the big no. So they're the ones that are saying, problem is not you, it's not an individual problem even though we feel it individually.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:33:33

It's a collective problem, we need collective solutions, we have to have solutions that are commensurate with the size of a threat, which means we can't do it ourselves, we have to do it with everybody else. And so the big yes is for things like solar panels or a wind farm, a community-owned wind farm or something like that. And the big no is for things like the protest and the reduction of the harms.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:33:54

And they say that the good thing about being involved in a group is that when you go to bed exhausted, somewhere in the world, somebody else is waking up full of enthusiasm. And when you get really sick of your big no campaign, there's always a group of big yeses just around the corner who are dying to have you come and join them. So the big of the yes and the big of the no is to be trying to imagine the biggest systemic solution you can think of, and then you have to break it down into a component piece and

Dr. Susie Burke

0:34:23

then go for one of those pieces. Find some people that you'd like to do it with.

Brianne

0:34:28

Yep, like a relay. The whole rest is resistance. You know, a lot of climate activists or people in general don't feel they can stop the work because if they do, they're sort of giving up. Not stop permanently, but just have a rest.

Brianne

0:34:40

But of course, there are other people who are willing to pick up the baton and carry it on, even if you're just having a couple of days off, which is so important.

Brianne

0:34:46

So this is a personal question

Brianne

0:34:47

you may or may not want to answer, which is obviously completely fine. Do you have hope for the future? Because you have come across as incredibly optimistic, which is a real, it's really nice. Do you, because you work with so many climate scientists, and I know that they're not super great about the future, but you will see a more well-rounded view I suspect than I do. Do you have hope that we're going to pull it together to prevent say 3 degrees or hopefully 6?

Dr. Susie Burke

Oh look we might not prevent 3 degrees. Okay. We're aiming for 2 degrees aren't we? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're not going to make 1.5.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:35:27

Can we keep under 2 degrees? I mean in terms of am I hopeful for us being able to come in under a specific number that's a hard thing to say, but I think I am an optimist. But I can also be thinking, oh my God, we’re just f***ed. But then I can turn to the things that I love about the world that I am in and the amazing people who are all doing amazing things, and I can think, well, that's kind of great. And I do also believe, because another part of my background had been through a group

Dr. Susie Burke

0:36:03

called Psychologists for Peace, and we teach a conflict resolution model, interspace conflict resolution, it's what they use in teaching the UN for international conflict and disputes and things like that. So I very much believe, because I've worked in that for a long time and in communities, I very much believe that humans are able to cooperate and collaborate and that peace is possible because it's just a learning of a certain set of skills and being able to have your underlying needs, wants, and fears, and concerns met.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:36:35

So I'm sort of optimistic about that. One of the things that I find quite frustrating is that that's not taught and so we don't have a whole, you know, community of people believing in that because it does help to know how to resolve conflict. And so, of course, because I do believe that humans are entirely capable of doing that, then I do believe that it's possible for us to collaborate and solve problems. And so in terms of dystopian novels, I do prefer the ones that demonstrate people being

Dr. Susie Burke

0:37:10

able to divide up things equally and look after each other and not eat the dying people, but try to, you know, share the food out equally and keep going.

Brianne

0:37:22

Yeah.

Brianne

0:37:23

Okay.

Brianne

0:37:24

Yeah, interesting. How do you talk to children about it? Do you get a few parents who are, you know, it's like you can, you shouldn't insulate them from this. So how do you cope with what I imagine are quite big feelings in children and teenagers because they'll, and look, another question I want to talk about is social media, but they will get all of this negativity from

Brianne

0:37:44

social media because it may be 88, give or take, percent of people who care and have genuine concern about this, but I tell you the 12 percent, they're all in social media comments going on and on about how it's all a big bloody conspiracy. And that's why that stat is kind of baffling to me because all you see online is deniers and conspiracy theorists. However, how do you have conversations with children about it in a way that's not dumbing it down and not ignoring their concerns,

Brianne

0:38:11

but not making them so bloody terrified of their future?

Dr. Susie Burke

0:38:15

One of the first things we say is you really want to be having that conversation with your children because, as you pointed out, they're hearing about it somewhere else, so you may as well be part of that conversation. And so we'll even say that to young parents as well. As soon as your child is out in the world at kindergarten or childcare, you really want to be talking about climate change. You want to know what they know. And at that age, it's all about helping children to fall in love with the world. Children have to be first, fall in love with nature really is the thing that we talk about then. And that's fun. And yes, so some researchers that I was reading were talking about how you first have to be

Dr. Susie Burke

0:38:53

in nature to then be able to work with nature, like build things. First of all, you have to be able to walk through along a riverbank before you can then be picking up sticks and building a little house and interacting with nature, and that has to come before you can then be for nature, i.e. fighting for it, picking up the litter or getting involved in campaigns for nature. So that's sort of a progression. And then the other thing that we advise parents in talking with children is to be checking what they know, to be able to correct any misperceptions then.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:39:43

You're wanting to leave them thinking that the world is a great place and that people are awesome and that life is worth living. So that's a really important message that you're wanting to communicate. And so part of that is what I was talking about with you earlier, which is looking out for the other millions of people who feel the same as them and care deeply and are doing something about it. So we call that, and it's the same in disaster recovery, you know, it's looking for the heroes

Dr. Susie Burke

0:40:11

and the helpers, so orienting them to be able to see that. And that might also involve getting involved themselves in things that are contributing to making a better place. So like my partner takes his son, has for a number of years, along to the local repair cafe. So he's good with a screwdriver, likes pulling things apart.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:40:33

So that's his contribution to community projects that are around creating a sustainable world.

Brianne

It's a massive, massive question. But basically open and honest conversations from as early as they are likely to encounter it, which is pretty early, and then getting them involved in some way that they may enjoy to start getting them... I think it's Steve Irwin who said, oh man, I'm paraphrasing badly, but first you have to know it to understand it to love it, right?

Brianne

0:41:03

It's that theory about nature.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:41:06

Oh, I remembered a really important one. Another one that we really talk about is that children have to see us doing something about climate change. Because in the largest study that's been done of children and young people, it was published in 2021, where they surveyed 10,000 children across a number of different countries in the high emissions and low emissions countries. What they found was that a large number of children felt that adults had failed to care

Dr. Susie Burke

0:41:37

for the planet. 85% of young people aged between 16 and 25 had thought that. So you don't want that to be you. You need to be one of the people that they see cares about the planet because we know that people do care about it. That's a perception gap, right, as well.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:41:53

And partly maybe that's because they're all talking to each other on social media, and so they're not talking to the older people who are out there, the knitting nannies and those sorts of people who are out there at the process and things like that. So they need to see you taking action and doing something. So you have to get up and get out and do something. It has to be really obvious.

Brianne

Yeah, that makes total sense. Not only leading by example, but again, giving that modicum of comfort, I guess.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:42:13

Yes, for sure. Because the other thing that they found in that study was that children and young people have two things that they're worried about. They're worried about the climate crisis and they're worried about government inaction or inaction. And that's... It's not just that they're worried about the climate crisis. They're worried about people's behaviour too.

Brianne

0:42:38

Makes total sense. And they're not wrong to worry about it. Okay. Social media. I mentioned earlier it's a rather toxic negative place, which we know. How much do you think that's contributing to people's concern and, what do we call it, distress about the climate crisis.

Dr. Susie Burke.

Yeah, yes. Well, when you mentioned it before, I was thinking, maybe that's why I'm an optimist because I'm not on social media much. And that's because I've had teenagers that were growing up through the development of

Dr. Susie Burke

0:43:05

social media as a thing, and my children were at a Steiner school, right, so there were all these values about that being not a good thing. So I was very supportive in that. So how much of that, you asked, is contributing to the perception gap? Well, in this article that I was just reading while I was waiting for you to come online, that was one of the reasons that they were saying it's mainstream media as well because

Dr. Susie Burke

0:43:30

mainstream media will focus on a sensational story because they will try to make money, which means they have to grab our attention and they can more easily grab our attention by sensational negative stories. So that is a problem. And so yes, then of course, the loud voices that turn up on social media are going to have an undue effect.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:43:54

But really, when you ask how much of a problem is it, it's as much a problem for action on climate change as it is for eating disorders in women, as it is for all of the social problems that have got a connection to negativity on social media. These are all big problems.

Brianne

0:44:21

Yeah.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:44:22

That could be a big no or a big yes that somebody might want to get into is, you know, looking at... It doesn't have to be about solar panels and wind turbines. You know, that's a really legitimate campaign that people can get interested in as well, is tightening up social media laws about what people are allowed to post and things like that. There's much good that can come from that.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:44:46

And in fact, just on that, climate change is actually not one of the most imminent existential threats to humans at the moment. There are largely considered to be these three other more imminent existential threats. Not that climate change isn't a huge problem, we need to do something about it.

Brianne

0:45:06

Oh, okay, there's something else I have to worry about.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:45:08

Okay. Yeah, so the more imminent ones would be another pandemic, a bigger, worse pandemic, that's always a big threat. AI, artificial general intelligence, and this is where the social media comes in, because it's the speed of the development of artificial intelligence without the sufficient international rules and this incredibly fast-moving thing. And so that's a very legitimate big yes or big no campaign for people who are good at that sort of thing to get interested

Dr. Susie Burke

0:45:41

and involved in that sort of thing. And the third one is largely considered to be another large world war.

Brianne

Yes, that's certainly a concern at the present, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, and watching things like the bird flu progression through the states at the moment and a few epidemics breaking out in parts of Africa. It's all very interesting, all very concerning. The more we encroach on natural spaces, of course, the more we are likely to have zoonosis and move into pandemics.

Dr. Susie Burke

Yeah. So we've descended into this miserable and anxiety-provoking place in this conversation.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:46:21

We couldn't have it too cheerful. No. But this is why it's also important to have that other perspective, which is those enormous improvements that there is no better time to be alive than today, and that every single country has made massive progress in decreasing child mortality, increasing life expectancy, increasing access to water, energy, sanitation, so on and so forth, across all countries, even the poorest countries in the world. And that's massive.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:46:49

That's humans that have enabled that to happen through just chipping away and improving things. And we need to keep remembering those sorts of things.

Brianne

0:46:59

Yes, you're absolutely right. Because you do see, again, comments everywhere, people saying, you have conversations with people and I hate it here, we've just destroyed things, all that ever happened, we make everything worse. You do see that constant negative thread

Brianne

0:47:12

through every conversation. Maybe it's just, maybe it's the people I hang around with.

Brianne

0:47:15

Oh God.

Brianne

0:47:15

What is the common denominator here? No. I do see that a lot though.

Brianne

0:47:20

But it is absolutely worth noting. Well, I'm not sure about right this minute, but certainly a couple of years ago was one of the most peaceful times on earth.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:47:27

Yes. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And the levels of violence and deaths through violent conflict have decreased and decreased and decreased. And these things are all facts. And the other thing on that is that there's this exercise that environmental psychologists sometimes do in order to promote meaning-focused coping for our present times, which is to get people to consider what period in history they would prefer to have been alive. And it's quite hard to find a time that would be better.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:48:10

Anyway, I shall leave that.

Brianne

0:48:11

Especially if you're a woman.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:48:12

Especially if you're a woman, or gay, or trans, or disabled, or…

Brianne

0:48:17

Yeah.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:48:18

I was listening to somebody the other day and she said, oh, I would really not want to be, have been alive in feudal times. And somebody once said, I thought the 90s was pretty good, but not if you were trans and-

Brianne

0:48:33

No, if you're a straight white male, good to go.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:48:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brianne

0:48:37

No, you’re dead right.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:48:39

Yeah, so it's a very interesting experiment. And of course, even if you were a straight white male, if half of the population is subjugated and oppressed and you know, then it's not that great.

Brianne

I wouldn't have thought so, although I will refrain from talking about some of the debates that are going on in some of the political arenas at the moment, but yes.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:49:02

Yes, and so that's an important thing to think. And also, this is Thomas Doherty, he's an environmental psychologist in America, I also heard him say as part of that thought experiment, that it's a bit, you're using hubris if you're thinking that this is the worst, you know, that these problems are the worst problems that we've ever had. Because the people at the time of the Black Plague probably thought that was the worst time.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:49:29

People in the trenches in the Second World War probably thought that was the worst time. Like it's a bit hubristic, if that's a word, to say that this is the, you know, that these are the most challenging times.

Brianne

0:49:41

Yeah, I think what makes this so, obviously I can't speak because I've never lived through a black plague epidemic, obviously, but what makes this so all-encompassing is because it is all-encompassing. It's not just us as a species,

Brianne

0:49:54

it's every other species we're dragging down with us, and I find that particularly heartbreaking. Why do you think, this is my last question for you, and I think I know the answer. Why is it so polarising? Why is it one of these topics people say, oh, I don't want to get political but talk

Brianne

0:50:08

about climate change. Why is it so hard to talk about? Is it because people feel guilty and then they get defensive?

Dr. Susie Burke

0:50:16

Yes. Well, I mean a prolific use of fossil fuels has been kind of fun. So one can feel a little bit defensive at the loss of that abundance of energy, which is why the solutions are not to necessarily anticipate that we have to have a low-energy future, but that we need to have a zero carbon energy future. And they are not mutually exclusive.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:50:56

They're not mutually exclusive, yeah. And why else do people get so defensive? I mean, we can feel defensive if we think that we're going to be made to feel guilty, so one of the things we need to remember when talking to somebody across a values divide is to be very careful not to shame them or to make them feel guilty because we know that pointing out to somebody how bad they are or pointing out how big the problem is, there's no evidence that that ever changes a person's behaviour.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:51:35

And in fact, what the research shows is that the opposite is often true, that if you criticise somebody for their behaviour or shame them, it usually results in them hardening their position and doubling down on their problematic behaviour. So instead, and this comes back to that Psychologists for Peace bias that I've got, instead, what we need to do is communicate warmth and openness and curiosity, and use a warm voice, and use warm eyes, and communicate safety to another person when we're talking to them,

Dr. Susie Burke

0:52:06

and be curious about what are the things that they care about, and show them the ways in which we share some of those values. And if you can, you can also communicate to them how those things that they care about, you know, like surfing, is also consistent with caring about the planet because the oceans are a little bit too warm and the sharks come in a little bit closer and that's a real pest when you're a surfer. So looking for the 10% on which you agree and then being able to see if you can nudge

Dr. Susie Burke

0:52:44

somebody to see that that actually means that they sort of do care about climate. Which can be very frustrating to do but it's well worth doing. Yes. And the point is, so as I'm talking, in my head I'm thinking about Winifred Louis, who's a social psychologist at University of Queensland. She's done these wonderful videos where she talks about, and she's got an awesome TED

Dr. Susie Burke

0:53:07

talk as well, which is really worth seeing. Winifred Lewis is her name. about how the point is to, we underestimate how much a person who has different values to us doesn't trust us. We really underestimate that. So that's the first thing, is to have realistic expectations about where we're going to get in a conversation with somebody who doesn't share the same values, who doesn't see us as being one of them. It's very low.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:53:33

But to leave the conversation with them having thought, that was quite a nice conversation. That person was quite a nice person. And then there's a greater chance that they'll be willing to have another conversation with you another time or with somebody else. You're not going to change their mind necessarily. You're not going to change their mind.

Brianne

0:53:53

No, no, you're not. No, that trust comment is quite interesting. But, of course, if you're talking to someone, you don't share any of their thoughts or values, you're going to assume some things about them that therefore you wouldn't,

Brianne

0:54:04

that would mean you wouldn't trust them.

Brianne

0:54:05

That makes perfect sense. I have one final question for you. This is kind of the fun question I ask everybody. And the answers are very interesting. So if you were the supreme global overlord, you had the power to do anything

Brianne

0:54:17

to make the world a better place, what would be the very first thing you would do?

Dr. Susie Burke

0:54:18

Oh, I'd teach everybody interest-based conflict resolution.

Brianne

0:54:25

Oh. What do you mean interest-based?

Dr. Susie Burke

0:54:25

So interests are the things that underlie your position and they are your needs, your wants, your fears and your concerns. So just say you wanted to go to Hawaii for the holidays and your partner wanted to go to the local beach. That's your position but underneath that are your interests. Your interest might be to need a nice, warm climate, to wanting to eat tasty food and to have rich cultural experiences, and to have a lovely connecting time with your partner, and to not have to think about work. These are all your needs

Dr. Susie Burke

0:55:09

and your wants and your fears and your concerns. So that's your interest. And your partner has got their interests as well. They're interested in getting a suntan and, you know, these sorts of things. Concerned about being bored on a holiday and things like that. And then what you do is you brainstorm on the basis of those interests a whole lot of different options where you're looking for some way of being able to meet all of those needs, wants, fears and concerns that you've generated, some of which you have in common. And once you've done that, you then come up with a solution that has probably got several elements.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:55:47

It's not just, we should go to Hawaii or we should go to the local beach. There'll be a whole lot of combination of things that comes up to being your holiday plan. So it might be that you decide to find a beach that's much further away but doesn't involve going on an airplane because one of the fears might be scared about, or might be guilt about your carbon footprint or scared about the plane crashing or something like that. And so you come up with these options that meet all your needs, get the suntan, have a relaxing time, to connect, to assuage your guilt, etc.

Brianne

0:56:22

Okay.

Brianne

0:56:23

And then, so it's like a structured way to compromise by ensuring you know what the actual problem is?

Dr. Susie Burke

Yeah, yes, that's right. To know what the unmet interests are, the needs, the wants, the fears and the concerns. So usually when we argue with somebody, we just come up with the first solution. There's something that we're needing and wanting and feared and concerned about, we come up with our first solution. It's not usually the best solution, then we argue it fiercely with the other person and they would lock in, they're arguing fiercely their first

Dr. Susie Burke

0:56:53

preferred solution. And you miss out on actually knowing what are you really wanting and needing and coming up with them all. Anyway, so yeah, sorry, that's what I would do.

Brianne

Yeah, and I guess that would tie in to be able to have conversations with anybody even if you fundamentally don't agree with their position.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:57:10

Because at the end of the day, like largely we all want the same thing.

Brianne

0:57:14

Yeah. Happiness, healthiness.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:57:16

Yeah, we want a safe climate, we want to be healthy.

Brianne

Yeah, it's just we differ in how we're going to get there sometimes.

That's about it.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:57:24

Yeah.

Brianne

0:57:25

Once you agree on that base, I guess you go a lot further.

Brianne

0:57:26

Is there anything else you'd want to say?

Brianne

0:57:27

Generally, get out there and start blockading some stuff, you know?

Dr. Susie Burke

0:57:28

No, I think we've covered a lot.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:57:29

I think I'll leave it there.

Brianne

0:57:30

Yeah. No, it's been brilliant. Thank you. I did not expect it to be so cheerful because I was having a pretty bad day and then poor Susie was waiting for me when I was trying to log in because my wonderful podcasting software was like, no, we're just going to log you back out every time you click into the studio.

Brianne

0:57:52

So that was a mildly stressful start.

Dr. Susie Burke.

0:57:55

Would have been.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:57:56

But I got to read some great articles, so I'm pleased with the delay. It worked out well.

Brianne

0:58:01

So thank you. I really appreciate that.

Brianne

0:58:02

I think you've shared some really interesting strategies and some really interesting statistics. I'm still slightly blown away that 88, you know, the peak, the percentage of people believe, truly, deeply believe that it's an emergency. Oh, that made me feel so much better.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:58:18

Yes.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:58:22

Yeah, because that's a lot of people who are prepared to do something good.

5

0:58:28

Yeah.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:58:29

And that is the other thing, is how many millions of people are out there. Tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people out there who are doing something to ensure we don't end up with six degrees of temperature change.

Brianne

0:58:39

Thank you. I really appreciate your time.

Dr. Susie Burke

0:58:40

You're very welcome.

Brianne

0:58:41

And there you go. I hope you learned something and realised that being green isn't about everything in your pantry matching with those silly glass jars or living in a commune. If that's your jam, fabulous. But sustainability at its heart is just using what you need. If

Brianne

0:58:57

you enjoyed this episode, please don't keep it to yourself and feel free to you enjoyed this episode, please don't keep it to yourself and feel free to drop me a rating and hit the subscribe button. Kia ora and I'll see you next week.

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