Thanks to Damian Carrington for highlighting the emotional toll of working on climate science (‘We have emotions too’: Climate scientists respond to attacks on objectivity, 25 October). As co-chairs of the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA), we applaud the scientists’ courage in speaking out.
Climate scientists are frontline emergency workers in need of support. They spend every day seeing and studying in depth the consequences of our governments’ pusillanimous failure to act. And when they bear witness to it, they are often attacked, especially if they are women, people of colour or from the global south. Being alone with difficult feelings and believing that they are denied by others makes them even harder to bear.
This is also a result of something that affects us all: socially constructed silence, an unspoken shared silencing of what we don’t want to know. As social beings, for us to act on this emergency we need to be able to talk about it and know that we are part of a collective – and talking about it requires psychological safety, knowing that our difficult feelings will be heard and acknowledged.
The Climate Minds Coalition, of which CPA is a member, is calling for improved access to support for people experiencing the psychological impacts of climate change. Listening circles with a climate focus and climate-aware therapy should be much more widely available. We need a changed culture: one that both allows scientists, conservationists and climate journalists to accept and prioritise support, and also helps the rest of us face the unpalatable truths they reveal.
Kate Adams and Rebecca Nestor
Co-chairs, Climate Psychology Alliance
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