Speaker Series 5
Recording
The fifth DevSCA Speaker Series presentation was live-streamed in November 2024. View the live stream recording via the video embedded above.
Abstract
The objective of this webinar/workshop is to help people cultivate a type of ‘active’ hope that is crucial for engaging in ongoing work and action in the face of the enormous environmental and societal challenge of climate change. We will look at two psychological models which help us develop strategies to cope with existential distress and focus on what matters in the context of the climate emergency. The climate crisis is not an individual problem, although we experience it as individuals. We will generate examples of the ‘Big Yes’ and the ‘Big No’ - collective actions which aim to change the systems that are harming us and causing our anxiety, helplessness and despair. We all know what makes a life worth living and it does us good to cultivate and use these parts of our lives to connect with others in climate action. We will also explore non-violent direct action as a technique, and the importance of the sympathetic majority at home being explicit and loud in their support of systemic change.
Speaker
Susie Burke
Dr Susie Burke is an environmental psychologist, therapist, climate activist and parent living in Central Victoria, Australia. Her key interest is in the role that psychology plays in helping us understand the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change. For 17 years, as senior psychologist at the Australian Psychological Society (APS), she developed resources on coping with climate change, raising children for a climate altered world, and disaster preparedness and recovery. She now works in private practice, consulting to organisations, and running workshops and individual sessions to help people come to terms with climate change. She is also an adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Queensland.