Chapter 5 - Be Less Right and More in Relation
notes on "A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety" by Sarah Jaquette Ray
Introduction:
One of the most important insights from progressive narratives is the idea that we are not alone. The more we meditate on our well-being, the more we realise how closely it is connected to the well-being of others. Paradoxically, self-study alleviates feelings of isolation, competitiveness, and obsession with our own happiness. Explored in this chapter is how way to enlightenment is through compassion - for one’s self and for others. By seeing our labour in connection with others, we also shed the worry that we are the only ones working hard for our cause, and that only we are striving for solutions.
When faced with climate deniers, we can easily get “triggered” and instinctively frame them as these nefarious, science-denying, evil goblins. Obviously, this isn’t the case; climate denialism stems not from evil or malicious intent but like most of our beliefs, from emotions.
The battle over climate change has divided us into camps, each with our own interests and concerns about how the current crisis will affect us.
Some right-leaning people think climate change will take away their jobs and prompt overreach by an incompetent government, or that climate change is an elite issue promoted by highly-educated metropolitans. Some civil liberty groups fear that panic around climate refugees will be used to curtail civil rights. Economically vulnerable communities may be more concerned with other issues such as racial profiling or unionisation.
If these groups can’t work together, it will be that much harder to co-create solutions and thrive together in a climate-altered world. To effectively address climate breakdown, we need to move away from the perception that the climate movement belongs to the left or the privileged or the powerful.
This is necessary to address the situation but also to maintain our personal resilience, since being continually frustrated by the positions of others will only sap our energy. Compassionate communication helps us overcome the urge to retreat into positions of comfort, opens us up to understanding others’ viewpoints, and activates the part of the brain that creates positive feelings :)
Continue reading to learn more
1) Being right Is overrated—Being Heard Is Key
Instead of seeing climate change as a battle between two sides, we should be asking how engagement with climate change might initiate opportunities for collaboration and for healing.
When people start to advocate for climate justice, they often get engaged in heated political debates with their families and friends. To have fruitful exchanges we should develop tools such as active listening and non-violent communication (NVC). We need to replace “being right” with building trust and relationships. When we talk to people with curiosity, flexibility, and respect in a way that shows we understand where they are coming from, we are much more likely to receive positive responses to what we have to say.
Climate deniers are not fundamentally dumb. Instead, their denial originates from the feeling that their way of life and their values are threatened. It is no coincidence that the largest climate denying demographic in Europe is the Old White Man. Many conservatives actually do care about the environment but hate federal regulation, are suspicious of scientific experts, and think that climate change is a way for the “liberal elites” to gain power over their lives. They are simply worried that science is being deployed for ulterior purposes that seek to oppress them, amplified by the fact they have very likely been subjected to billionaire-owned fossil fuel propaganda (eg. Fox News).
Letting go of expectations can reveal surprising connections. The Pentagon and insurance companies are unlikely bedfellows with the climate movement, and yet they have developed some of the most comprehensive climate change policies and plans within the USA. It might also startle you to learn that in 2015, the National Association of Evangelicals recognized climate change as a threat to “the lives and well-being of poor and vulnerable people” and called on its 43 million members across the United States to take action. Think about how you can leverage at least some of that collective power by putting aside ideological differences with these groups in favour of agreement around climate change.
Mainstream discussions about climate change would have us believe that there are only two ways to view climate change: you are either a believer or a denier. In actuality, there are at least 6 different stances on the issue that range from the Alarmed, the Concerned, the Cautious, the Disengaged, the Doubtful, and the Dismissive (for more on this, read the article “Global Warming’s Six Americas”). Because it is not a battle between deniers and believers, between wrong and right, we can rethink who the “enemy” is and change our emotional orientation toward climate action. There’s no monolithic army of hostile opponents but rather, a fragmented group of stakeholders with disparate interests, understandings, and needs.
If you do not know someone’s values, have a conversation, get to know them, and figure out what makes them tick. Once that is done, all you have to do is connect the dots between their values and why they should care about the environment as a result of said values.
2) Focus on the Local
Make the link between climate change and the stated concerns of a local population. Turn your attention to the places we have loved and lost, the places that are sick and dying, and the places we care about that are tangible and experientially known and real to us. Climate change resonates with people when it is felt or perceptible, either in the body (as with extreme heat or climate borne illness and disease) or materially (as with property damage from severe weather events). To engage people, move away from abstract terms like “Anthropocene” or “atmosphere” and instead talk about the daily struggles for justice, such as health or infrastructure. This makes climate change more emotionally accessible to a wide range of people. People have different reasons for caring about climate change, so remember not to get upset when they are not as passionate about the cause as you are; they are just understandably suspicious that the plight of polar bears miles away is getting more attention than their own troubles.
Exploring the effects of climate change on a local rather than national or global scale also reduces polarisation. People are more likely to work together when they view climate change as a shared problem affecting them as property owners, resource consumers, insurance policy holders, parents, and any other type of shared identity. This in turn also helps communities create solutions together, whereupon they can make demands on their politicians at the national level.
3) Reframe the Issues
One of the most effective measures we can take to promote collaboration across party and demographic lines is to reformulate climate change as a unifying issue – something part of a background story that resonates with the daily experiences of people’s lives.
Appropriately, health is the best way to make climate change relevant because it positions the subject in terms of the everyday. What makes life worth living is love for people: our love for our family, hometown, friends, children, humanity and their health in particular. Drawing awareness to how human health is impacted can effectively elevate public concern in the United States by making it a personal concern for everyone. Health is a bipartisan issue that can make environmental policy matter across existing political blocks.
We need to balance or replace themes of disaster, sacrifice, and uncertainty with preparedness, values, and opportunity. This framing helps align climate change with the highest priorities of most Western citizens: economic security, health care, and freedom.
In one case, a sociologist who was studying mostly white communities in Louisiana, a state with high levels of industrial pollution but paradoxically high levels of resistance to government regulation of the polluters as well. These communities were much more open to talking about environmental issues when they were discussed using terms that resonated with their deeply-held core beliefs such as “moral purity”, “stewardship”, “freedom”, or “rights'' - quite unlike terms that compel liberals to action, such as “greedy corporations” or “scientific data”.
4) Avoid Polarising Language
The notion that Middle America does not care about the environment should be challenged. “People are all talking about it, without talking about it. It’s become such a charged topic. [...] The understanding of our interdependence with nature is not limited to liberal, elitist enclaves. Quite the contrary: The people out there on the tractors and barges and fishing boats understand it as well as anyone, and know that long-term survival requires a changed relationship with nature - not as something to be dominated or exploited, but as an ally of immense mystery and power.”
A New York Times profile describes how a fourth-generation grain farmer in Kansas has responded to climate change-induced drought by embracing an “environmentally conscious way of farming that guards against soil erosion and conserves precious water. He can talk for hours about carbon sequestration or the science of the beneficial microbes that enrich his land. In short, he is a climate change realist. Just don’t expect him to utter the words climate change”.
Be willing to keep an open mind. “Purity politics” as a didactic kind of eco-fundamentalism does harm. Working or talking only with people who agree with you on all your top issues will cause you to miss many opportunities to make progress in areas of shared interest. We don’t have to get everybody to believe in climate change; we only need to find common ground on which to work together on an issue in which we each have a stake.
5) Foster Climate Justice
A key reason as to why climate change has been viewed as an elite issue is that scientific discoveries and concerns are usually portrayed as an issue far removed from people’s daily lives. Additionally, when environmentalists claim that climate change is the greatest threat facing humankind they commit “existential exceptionalism” by omitting the many communities who have endured and are still enduring serious existential threats already. Ignoring their experience divorces the environmental movement from a much bigger ‘arc of history’.
The environmental justice movement is a successful attempt at making environmental issues meaningful to people who have experienced historical oppression. The social justice check on the climate movement is not just about the “trickle down” of ecological goods that comes with saving the global ecosystem; it’s about an entirely different way of understanding the interconnectedness of social and ecological forms of degradation.
As we shed light on the suffering that climate change is causing, it is critical to pay attention to the social, political, and economic systems that exacerbate climate change; these should be held accountable. Systems such as the patriarchy and systemic ableism render parts of the population more vulnerable to climate events. Thus, we can and should demand swifter and systemic responses to a warmer planet such as improvements in health care, worker rights, and infrastructure, as well as practice our regenerative claims in our relationships and organisations.
6) Beyond Empathy
Many in the environmental movement see empathy as the solution to overcoming our disgust and disdain for anti-environmentalists. What could be wrong with that?
Emotional empathy, as opposed to cognitive empathy, exploits rather than overcomes our biases by distorting our moral judgments.
Empathy casts a “spotlight” on individual cases of suffering, often at the cost of alleviating suffering writ large.
Empathy is biased. We are more prone to feeling empathy for attractive people and for those who share our ethnic or national background and identity.
Empathy is narrow. It connects us to particular individuals, real or imagined, and is insensitive to statistical data. We don’t empathise with those we cannot identify with or see.
There isn’t anything morally superior about empathy; it may lead to prosocial behaviour for some groups, but it can do so at a cost to other groups. We do not need to feel others' pain in order to find good reasons to want to reduce suffering. For instance, conservatives and bigots can be very empathetic as they over-empathize with the in-group. Additionally, hyper-empathy about others’ suffering can get in the way of our ability to function. Women are especially socially conditioned to prioritise the feelings of others, often at the expense of their own. Finally, gestures of empathy can often be seen as patronizing. In any case, empathy rarely changes the circumstances of those who suffer.
We should not be required to surrender our anger or insist on harmony in order to build relationships and cooperate with people across ideological and political differences. We do not need to love them; in fact, we may not like them at all. The point is not to love them or empathize with them but to be genuinely curious about the feelings that motivate them and aim for the larger goal of helping society function as well as it can. Harmony, comfort, and empathy are neither required for, nor the point of, democracy or social change. We can cooperate and build community - indeed, we must learn to be able to - despite anger and discomfort. That is the real challenge—to hold space for both righteous anger and curious compassion.
7/ Compassion—Self-preserving and respectful
Empathy involves feeling another person’s suffering as if you were experiencing the same thing. Compassion on the other hand - from the Latin root compati, meaning “to suffer with” - is the ability to care about another’s suffering without having to identify with it. Whereas empathy activates parts of the brain associated with pain, compassion lights up those associated with love.
Empathy fatigue - usually experienced by doctors, trauma workers, and emergency responders - is burnout caused by chronic empathic distress. Boundaries are essential for our self-preservation. Yet whereas empathy dissolves our boundaries, compassion maintains them: it merely asks that we remain curious and understanding, and that we desire for others’ suffering to end. Whereas empathy can be exhausted, compassion is renewable from our reserves with abundance.
But how we can stay connected without becoming exhausted by that connection? Our energy to care for others comes from attending to our own needs. The more we are able to nurture our own deepest, existential desires, such as feeling loved, the more energy we have for tending to others’ needs. To continue loving the world enough to keep improving it, we must cultivate compassion first of all for ourselves.
It does not make us feel good to be angry all the time and to imagine that others are ill-intentioned and heartless. For entirely selfish reasons, we should adopt an orientation towards curiosity and compassion. This would alleviate unnecessary suffering and could also lead us to find more effective political strategies to change others’ hearts and minds. Understanding that fear is at the root of much of our politics enables us to remain calm and make better decisions. What do you fear? Start there.
8/ Strategy
Those who produce stories - both fiction and nonfiction - exploit our need for dualisms of good/evil to manufacture drama, reinforcing our tendency to see the world that way. In truth, contrary to this black and white thinking regarding climate change in the United States, only 10 percent of citizens adamantly do not believe in climate change, which means that there is a greater swath of citizens who are not polarized and who are interested in having robust conversations - a huge coalition of the concerned in fact.
Unlike highly inflammatory topics such as abortion or gun rights, bipartisan collaboration on climate change is on the horizon, especially when demographics of youth are taken into account. “I don’t personally know anyone involved in young, right-of-centre politics that doesn’t believe climate change is an issue”, said a young Republican in an article about the American Conservative Coalition. “We can talk about this. Conservatives that care about the environment do exist”.
The endgame of compassion is not ultimately to agree with others or make them agree with us. Rather, it is to recognize how our inability to communicate is destroying the very fabric of democracy. We must recognize how speaking collaboratively is more effective than arguing well in bringing about social change. We must shift the goal of “winning” arguments to the far better goal of building shared interests with people whose positions may be different from our own.
If we proceed from the assumption that we may have something in common with those we perceive as our opposition and that we have a shared desire to contribute to the improvement of social conditions, we can have a conversation and perhaps even build a relationship based on respect for our differences. If we feel like we are constantly battling some “evil other”, our anger and fear will deplete us.
Conclusion
Take-aways:
□ Start with compassion for yourself.
□ Forgo the instant gratification of being “right” in favour of building long-term solidarity across party and class lines.
□ Don’t ramble about ideological or partisan politics; ask questions and listen to people’s answers.
□ Make climate change resonate by adapting your language to the audience and the local context.
□ Focus on common values like health, morality, freedom, and beauty to emphasize the universal benefits of climate activism.
□ Cultivate compassionate curiosity and understanding toward others.