Your Brain On Climate

The climate crisis needs all the ideas and imagination it can get. But today's guest says that liberalism - the system many of us live in, which cherishes individual freedom above pretty much all else - is a straitjacket on our imaginations, and our ability to think and act big. If it really is harder to imagine the death of capitalism than the end of all life on Earth, does that explain why most visions of the future are so, well, crap?
Joining Dave this ep is Dr Christopher Shaw, author of 'Liberalism and the Challenge of Climate Change'. Chris has a very large brain and tells us why the rules of the system we live in have a huge influence on how we think about what's possible. Follow him on twitter @kalahar1.
Owl noises:
-- 10.01: One of the people credited with the phrase is the late Mark Fisher in his very influential (including I bet on Chris) Capitalist Realism.
-- 11.34: Not cheery, but here's more in Science about the transgression of six of the nine planetary boundaries.
-- 15.47: Chris means Hope in the Dark, a book I commend to you in the strongest possible terms.
-- 32.35: Freud and his repression. For plenty more on Freud, check out episode 11 with Dr Aaron Balick.
-- 40:44: The shortcut to Chris's Twitter thread.
Your Brain on Climate is a podcast about human psychology vs the climate crisis: what we think, why we think it, and how it all adds up to a planet-sized emergency. Contact the show: @brainclimate on Twitter, or [email protected].
Support the show on Patreon: www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate.
The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell, who you can find @powellds on Twitter. Original music by me too.
Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.

Mindfulness: a technique for training your brain to reflect on what it thinks and why. It can help us make smarter decisions, and can even get the House of Commons to stop shouting at each other quite so much. Magic! But can it save the planet?
Today's guest is Jamie Bristow, co-founder of the Mindfulness Initiative - an amazing organisation bringing the technique to the heart of policy and parliament. Jamie's trained MPs on skills of compassion and self-reflection, and thinks (as do I) that we could all benefit hugely from a bit more time spent thinking about thinking. He's also part of the team that's devised the Inner Development Goals.
We talk about Jamie's report - Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out - a compelling and comprehensive guide to how mindfulness can help society change how we live on planet Earth.
**EDIT: In introducing Jamie I wrongly say he started the mindfulness programme in the UK parliament. He didn't, he founded the associated institute. Jamie's asked me to correct that - happy to. ***
Owl noises:
-- 13:40: a short video in which Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about homo-sapiens-sapiens.
-- 18:12: the Reconnection... report is linked above.
-- 28:45: if you've never read The Unbearable Automaticity of Being, you should.
-- 37:55: the Apolitical Foundation's Mere Mortals report.
-- 41:58: A nice primer on Bob Kegan's levels of human development work.
-- 48:38: The excellent Common Cause is a good place to read about intrinsic v extrinsic values.
-- 51:55: I was going to link to some stuff I found on google about nature connectedness but you can google it yourself. Instead a plug for my chat with Lauren Hall Ruddell about this very thing. -- 53:16: Ian McGilchrist is a very clever man. I'm reading his The Master & His Emissary right now.
Your Brain on Climate is a podcast about human psychology vs the climate crisis: what we think, why we think it, and how it all adds up to a planet-sized emergency. Contact the show: @brainclimate on Twitter, or [email protected].
Support the show on Patreon: www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate.
The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell, who you can find @powellds on Twitter. Original music by me too.
Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.

Time. You work on a human timescale, but the planet doesn't. Sometimes we can think long term but mostly real life gets in the way: but the decisions we collectively take will have a huge impact on life on Earth now, and for generations to come.
What are the biases that peg us to short term thinking? How can we shift our perspective to the day after tomorrow, and how can that help everyday life? And what do pigeons have to do with it?
Joining Dave this episode is Ella Saltmarshe, Director of the Long Time Project and co-founder of Internarratives. She's also the host of the Long Time Academy podcast and a general all round nice egg. We talk about how to be a good ancestor, and yes: how to talk to pigeons.
Owl noises:

• 14:25 - Here's present bias in a nutshell.
• 20:55 - a New York Times article by Seligman about Homo Prospectus.
• 28:40 - Decca Aitkenhead's Times article on taking smartphones off her kids.
• 29:02 - Jonathan Haidt's campaign to stop kids having smartphones.
• 38:46 - Artist Katie Paterson.
• 39:51 - A Guardian review of Martin MacInnes's In Ascension.
• 40:20 - Here's the Marshmallow Laser Feast collective, including Treehugger.
• 43:48 - The Joseph Rowntree Foundation's Imagination Infrastructures project.

Your Brain on Climate is a podcast about human psychology vs the climate crisis: what we think, why we think it, and how it all adds up to a planet-sized emergency. Contact the show: @brainclimate on Twitter, or [email protected].
Support the show on Patreon: www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate.
The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell, who you can find @powellds on Twitter. Original music by me too.
Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.

Well you SAY you care about climate change, but you don't, do you? There's you, driving a car (!!!) or not putting that plastic bottle in the recycling (!!!!!). There's you, saying you value the planet, but acting like you JUST DON'T CARE.
You and me and everyone else. The gulf between our values and actions is large you could drive an SUV through it. This is the 'values action gap'. Closing it is the stated aim of just about all behavioural science and climate campaigns and all the rest of it. But it is evidently bloody hard. Because although most people say they care about the planet, the plastic and the carbon emissions and the dead stuff keeps on piling up. So what is the values action gap all about, and how do we actually leap it?
Joining Dave this week is Dr Gail Hochachka from the University of British Columbia in Canada. She explains her brilliant research which picks apart the values action gap in all its complexity, and gives us abundant reasons to be cheerful: perhaps the gap isn't as large as all that. Gail's paper on the gap (referenced throughout) is here.
Owl noises:
-- 12:28: This owl is a plug for Gail's paper, linked above.
-- 13:16: We've talked about hyperobjects on YBOC before, can't remember where. Read this.
-- 49:52: Gail has a fantastic new initiative, SALT.
Your Brain on Climate is a podcast about human psychology vs the climate crisis: what we think, why we think it, and how it all adds up to a planet-sized emergency. Contact the show: @brainclimate on Twitter, or [email protected].
Support the show on Patreon: www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate.
The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell, who you can find @powellds on Twitter. Original music by me too.
Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.

In this debut episode of Your Brain On Climate, Dave talks all things RISK with Dr Adam Corner (@ajcorner).
How do our brains understand risk? Are we still part jittery lizard, and if so which part? How do we - individually and as a society - decide what's risky enough to do something about? What can we learn from the wretched pandemic? And what can all of that teach us about the fact that while there's a climate emergency going on, it's not being treated like one?
Dr Adam Corner is an independent writer and researcher, formerly Director of Policy and Research at Climate Outreach. His website is www.adamcorner.uk.
Extra reading as highlighted by the twinkly noises:
- 06:43 - Social Amplification of Risk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNHdse6jFNI
- 10.33 - System One and Two thinking ('thinking fast and slow'). https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/kahneman-excerpt-thinking-fast-and-slow/
- 20:32 - Lorraine Whitmarsh and colleagues work into how lockdowns increase perceptions of risk: https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/uk-public-view-covid-19-as-a-threat-because-of-lockdowns-new-study-suggests/
- 31:02 - Daniel Gilbert & PAIN: https://medium.com/the-ascent/why-some-people-cannot-believe-in-the-science-of-climate-change-31c45b626b6b
A full series of Your Brain On Climate will follow later in 2021.
Your Brain on Climate is a podcast about human psychology vs the climate crisis: what we think, why we think it, and how it all adds up to a planet-sized emergency. Contact the show: @brainclimate on Twitter, or [email protected].
The show is hosted by Dave Powell, who you can find @powellds on Twitter. All music throughout the show and audio production is by Dave, because he's far too much of a control freak to let anyone else loose on it.
Show logo by Arthur Stovell at https://www.designbymondial.com.