This session features three scientists who are at the forefront of creating social change in climate attitudes and mitigation behavior. Ed Maibach (“How We Talk About Climate Matters”) will address the importance of climate attitudes, effective vs. detrimental messaging to raise awareness and change behavior, and the science of effective advocacy. Christine Wamsler (“Inner Transformation …
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Roshi Joan will speak to some of the psychosocial effects of climate change and the role of moral suffering and integrity as we address health issues related to the climate catastrophe. She will briefly explore four valences of moral suffering, and then unfold some of the deep health issues related to our climate catastrophe. She …
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It is no longer an enigma that climate change is drastically and detrimentally changing our world; glaciers are shrinking, sea levels are rising and our fellow beings are struggling to survive. How do we maintain hope in the face of such enormous, seemingly unfathomable adversity? What role do the stories we tell and the compassion …
“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.’’ – James Baldwin “You already know enough. What is missing is the courage to know what we know” – Raoul Peck, Documentary filmmaker, Exterminate All These Brutes
Often times climate change—and its urgency—is narrated through linear time. When narrated like a ticking clock, the sense that swift action is needed obscures responsibilities to others who risk being harmed by solutions to climate change. This presentation will then offer four different Indigenous approaches to narrating climate change: “depth time,” “seasonal time,” “kinship time,” …
How do we place ourselves in the climate crisis? Are we at home? Do we search for roots denied us or taken away? Can we quiet our busy minds and bodies to receive more than visitors do; to hear the plants and trees, to sense another, to protect and love as do inhabitants? How can …
We humans are creatures of bounded rationality and finite processing capacity, and it is understandable that we focus attention first on the here and now. And yet, many individual and social issues (from sufficient pension savings, to healthy eating, to sustainable economic growth) require increased attention to the future costs and benefits of possible courses …
Continue reading “How to Give the Future a Chance: Mind, Earth, and Climate Change”
Christiana Figueres is renowned for having delivered the seemingly impossible. During her tenure as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010-2016, she brought together national and sub-national governments, corporations, activists, financial institutions, communities of faith, think tanks, and technology providers to jointly deliver the unprecedented, historic Paris climate …
Continue reading “A Conversation with Christiana Figueres: The Case for Stubborn Optimism”
Building on the conception of ‘ecological phenomenology’ that Maria Heim and Ram have developed, and which he has written about in his recent book, he will share that there is a deep ‘ecological’ conception of being human in the contemplative traditions that could provide a paradigm for looking at the disciplinary and reflexive phenomenology of …
Even the best-intentioned efforts to stem the climate crisis often fail to address root causes; namely, our disconnection from one another and the earth. Could solutions to this and other climate-related challenges lie within the human mind? More than 900 scholars, scientists, contemplatives, students, and activists from 30+ countries convened online for Mind & Life’s …
