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Hello and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the very unprofessional podcast where we talk through some of the biggest changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Welcome to the new, maybe not very exciting episode.
Nonetheless, this week we're going to be discussing climate anxiety, which is a huge issue for us in our 20s.
I think this is the first generation to realize that our kids are not going to grow up in the same world that we live in.
So I thought we'd kind of discuss it today and I'd bring on a guest to join me.
Hi. Oh, hello. Hi. Um, I'm Tineo.
Yeah. I'm Gemma's resident climate guide.
I don't know. Guide is a good word for it.
Sounds very professional.
And for all those wondering, they're recording this across the web.
Across the interwebs.
Across the interweb.
It took a bit of a, took a few trial runs, but we're here now.
We're techie kids. We're techie kids.
I've got a pizza in front of me.
I've had a few glasses of wine.
How are you going this afternoon?
Good. Yeah, I have tea.
So not as exciting, but just as good.
Yeah. Um, sorry, there's me chewing.
Before we get into it, I feel like I want the audience to know you a little bit better.
So can you tell us about how we met?
What's your deal? Are you from, Gemma and I met at college and, um, we bonded just exclusively over Taylor Swift.
Um, that's literally, that's how I picked you on my head.
I'm like, it's Gemma.
We love Taylor Swift.
It's true. And our friendship is obviously more than that now.
You know, that's, it's literally, it's just Taylor Swift.
That's all we talk about.
Yeah. We don't even know why we're doing this episode.
Yeah. I can't think of anything else.
Yeah. This has not been endorsed by Taylor Swift.
So why are we doing it?
But I remember the first time I was like, oh my God, me and Shania are friends was when folklore got released and we came over.
I came over and did like a listening party at your house.
Yeah. You brought so many good snacks.
Yeah. And then I ate them all.
Well, it was a joint effort.
Yeah. We, we tried.
I think we did well.
Yeah. So what are we talking about today?
Cause it isn't Taylor Swift.
Yeah, it is not Taylor Swift.
We are going to be talking about climate anxiety, which is sort of something that I am.
I get I'm involved with how I'm an anxiety because I study climate science and policy at university.
And yeah, I have the, the things you want to know, you know, well, I don't have all the knowledge, but she has a fair amount.
And also like personal experience with this as well.
And like, so like I kind of already explained, I think the reason I'm really interested in discussing this is because I don't know if you agree today, but climate anxiety is a is like going to become a fucking pandemic.
Yeah. No, I definitely agree.
Yeah. And I really think that is just going to be overwhelmed.
Like we are facing, let's be real, like mass extinction, natural disaster is the end of the human race.
Yeah. I think I'm sorry.
I feel like our mental health, like, you know, sector is already overwhelmed and then adding climate turned onto that.
It's just, it's, it's going to go downhill.
Yeah, especially as like the world deteriorates even further and more people are surviving natural disasters.
I really wanted to say I read this excellent quote the other day.
I think it was maybe even on your Instagram.
Yeah. Classic. Yeah.
Follow her if you want some good climate change and for graphics that make you feel furious and also calm at the same time.
But I read this excellent quote and it was like, essentially, climate change is going to be conveyed through tragic videos of map of natural disasters we see on our phone until one day where the one's filming.
And that was pretty profound because I'm sure we'll get into it.
Like we've both already had experiences with things like bushfires, floods, you know, global warming in general.
Like it's not uncommon at this stage.
It just shows how it's just going to become like increasingly more prevalent with this next generation.
And like another big reason I wanted to talk about climate anxiety is because like I said, it's on the rise.
Many psychologists feel they're unequipped to handle a growing number of patients who are just despairing about the future of the planet because we're not like the systems and the processes we use to deal with general anxiety or depression.
They're just not really equipped for this kind of like existential dread, which you kind of agree with that.
Like it is very unique.
Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, so much of like mental health response, it's quite individualistic and this is like, which is important and needed.
But this is like a massive, you know, worldwide problem that everyone faces and you know, everyone's going to face it in really different ways as well.
That's a really good point.
I hadn't actually thought about that.
Like so often the struggles that we have mentally are very individualistic and you know, you can go to therapy for them and maybe work through it, but this is going to be something that's just like so much bigger and like, not to be existential, but like we're not going to save our planet.
Like we, we're going to try, but yeah.
But maybe this is my climate anxiety and climate like dread sinking in, like I just don't think that we're going to be able to fix it.
And there's, that's just a huge source of dread and how do like mental health professionals really adapt to this and like all over the world, various psychiatric organizations and governments, they've all recognized climate change as a growing threat to mental health, not just in terms of PTSD, you're
to like exposure to floods and bushfires and the like.
It just like a general common concern about the future of our planet, which I think is also really interesting.
And like, I just don't imagine it's going to disappear either.
And I think I was saying to you yesterday today when we, when we were talking on the phone about like the Morrison government.
Yeah. Yeah. I've seen the memes recently on Twitter.
Oh, did you see the memes?
Oh, there we go. You know, it's going to hit the news when there's memes about it.
But essentially the Morrison government ill, but whatever, announced that they wanted more school chaplains to help children due to climate anxiety, or more specifically, alarmist climate activism that they claimed had increased mental health concerns amongst children.
I think the chaser summed it up really well.
They tweeted and they were like, after the chaplain, like chaplain incident, we're taking the week off.
Like there's no need for satire because the government sort of just providing it there in the flesh.
I literally love it.
I love how they're like, it's left wing organizations, like get up and extinction rebellion.
Like they're, they're making kids stress because of their alarming messages, which is like the truth.
And it's like maybe you think that kids are actually just like stressing because it's like the end of the world.
Like you think that maybe, and I said, I was like, yeah, even like the mental health of children is politicized rather than, you know, actually like addressing the issue, like instead of being like, oh yeah.
Climate change is actually a problem.
They're like, oh my God, the fucking get up is poisoning them.
Yeah. It's, it's a massive amount of blame shifting, unfortunately.
Yeah. And like it's almost satirical.
Like it's ironic. It's just like it is some things like this.
You just can't help, but almost want to laugh at like just how ridiculous that like narrative shifting is.
And we also talked about how there's been some really interesting recent discussions about whether to add climate anxiety as a disorder into the DSM.
So the DSM being like the international manual manual of like all clinical mental health disorders and conditions.
So should climate anxiety as serious as it is be able to be classified as a mental health disorder.
And this would mean more governmental funding for this type of issue, more space for research into effective clinical approaches to minimize climate dread and existential dread concerning the planet and our climate.
You know, there's not really much more funding towards actually saving the planet that can be done, but it would help in terms of addressing this from a clinical perspective.
Anyhow, the reason I wanted to bring you on is you have such amazing general knowledge.
Yeah. What do you start?
You have like basically like a degree in environment and climate change.
Yeah. My I do politics, philosophy and economics as well, but that's a bit boring and environment.
Yeah. Environment and sustainability is the degree that I really enjoy and then I minor in climate science and policy.
Yeah. And I work for an environmental charity.
So she's got the whole package guys.
It's all it's all here.
A lot of climate dread to come with that, you know.
Yeah, absolutely. Also a fun fact.
We're working together next year.
We both got grad jobs at the same place.
So this is the first of many collaborations today.
I'm sure. I'm very excited.
Yeah. Me too. I feel like everyone knows what climate change is.
We don't need to tell you what it is.
If you have not heard about it, you've been sleeping under a rock.
But one thing I really want to talk about is the IPCC reports.
Can you give us a little bit of an overview?
So the IPCC or like the intergovernmental panel on climate change, there is just like a lot of acronyms in like the UN climate science world.
But they released their report on the physical science of climate change, which is part of AR six.
So it's like they go through cycles of reporting on the climate and this particular report.
It's just about the physical science and they, the IPCC doesn't actually do the science themselves.
They just assess current science.
So like they looked at about 14 ,000 publications.
There was like 234 authors and like over like 78 ,000 review comments.
So heaps of science was assessed.
It's basically like the best sort of analysis of current climate science in the world.
And they're timed to sort of tie into policy debates.
So like we have COP26 coming up, which is like in Glasgow when they'll it's a conference basically following on from the Paris agreement to try and keep global warming below two degrees.
And this report will really help that.
What are you, what are you expecting from this, from this conference?
Hopefully more intense climate sort of commitments to reduce emissions.
So Paris, there was a lot of change between Paris, which was in 2016.
And now like we had Trump in, you know, who pulled out of the Paris agreement and then Biden signed the Paris agreement back in.
And then so you have like, you know, one of the world's biggest polluters, the US flipping from completely like climate denier to really like solid pledged climate action.
We had China committing to net zero by 2050, Japan committed to net zero, I think by 20, oh sorry, China was committing by 2060.
So just a lot of different pledges.
So it'll be interesting to see whether other countries like Australia that haven't, we haven't changed our commitments, whether or not we'll sort of up the game or not.
What's our current commitment?
Our current commitment is I think 26 or 28 % reduction on 2000 in emissions.
Yeah. On 2005 levels, I think it's a really, it's a very weak political standpoint.
It's not great. Well, who can blame us?
Well, not blame us.
But who's surprised?
Yeah, no one's. Paul Morris and like COVID package was like, let's just give heaps of money to like fossil fuel organizations and like it will trickle down.
Yes. Yeah, I know. And very much into like a gas led recovery, which is not a recovery at all.
No, it's still a gas is still a fossil fuel and it's still terrible.
It's like our recovery is going to be only for the next 10 years and then well, we don't know what to do after that.
Yeah, exactly. Good luck, everyone.
Bye. See ya. See ya in hell.
But what did the report say specifically?
Because it's been in the news heaps, maybe for people who haven't read it, can you give us a little bit of a sum up of what's it all doom and gloom?
Like what's it telling us?
Yeah, it was, it was all doom and gloom.
I'm not going to lie.
And it's actually really interesting because every single government, which is part of the IPCC, which is like, you know, I think most governments across the world, they had to go through and approve this summary for policymakers line by line.
So basically the whole report was approved by every government worldwide.
So you've got, oh my God, I didn't even know that.
Yeah. Yeah. It's really so it sort of it actually on some cases, it means that the IPCC and their reports under represent sort of, it's like, I think the statistic is that IPCC reports are 20 times more likely to be worse than what they state.
Like their predictions, it's 20 times more likely that it'll be worse than their predictions because they actually tend to under report slightly because they have to make sure that everything is very, very certain because it's all being signed off by a bunch of governments, which means that it will probably
be worse than what they predict.
But you know, we'll just see.
But also the prediction was already pretty bad.
Yeah. So they said, you know, I think the press release slide was like, this is code red for humanity.
And they said the, you know, we're getting like extreme heat is more intense and frequent.
Heavy rainfall is more frequent and intense droughts increasing.
There's more frequent fire weather, the oceans, warming acidifying and losing oxygen.
And it's just basically saying that our, you know, the Paris agreement, like all governments worldwide basically tried to keep committed to trying keeping global warming under 1 .5 degrees or at least under two degrees.
But where this report is saying we will 100 % exceed that this century unless massively deep reductions in emissions are happening because we've already hit 1 .1 degrees of warning.
Actually the thing that really got me when I was, I like went to a seminar about this report and it said, if we want to hit net zero by 2050, which would keep us on like sort of the low, the lower emissions pathways to try and like keep it under two degrees.
We need to have a reduction in emissions, the equivalent of what the COVID pandemic did to us every two years.
So we need to like have that massive amount of sort of economic downturn every two years.
Currently, obviously there's ways that we can like decouple emissions from GDP.
So like if, you know, at the moment with it's very tied together.
So when GDP grows, emissions grow and fall a lot.
And we can change that.
But yeah, at the moment, it's like, we need to have a COVID pandemic level of reduction in emissions every two years.
And it'll be really interesting because like, I don't think COVID is going away anytime soon, but when it does, which will be probably within the next decade.
And like that sounds like a long time for like us right now, but in terms of like climate emissions, it's not really.
As soon as like COVID starts to kind of become less of the issue that everyone's worried about, vaccination increases, we don't really know what's going to happen.
But what will happen I think is that a lot of governments will seek to bounce back.
Bye.
