Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Thanks for all the ongoing interest you take, and work you do, to create a safe planet. 

Thanks to Clare who is helping put together the newsletter.

Regards,

Susie Burke

Public Interest, Environment and Disaster Response

Health Care Without Harm congratulates the American Medical Association (AMA) on their recent commitment to divest their financial holdings from toxic fossil fuels.
AMA’s House of Delegates’ adoption of a resolution “to end all financial investments or relationships (divestment) with companies that generate the majority of their income from the exploration for, production of, transportation of, or sale of fossil fuels” is a critical step toward ensuring health care providers first do no harm. 

Read the full article here.

by Niki Harré (also speaking at the APS congress in Sydney, Sept 2018!)

Can you save the planet and have some fun along the way? Aimed at the teacher who updates students on the latest climate change negotiations, the conservationist who works to protect endangered species, the office manager who buys fair-trade coffee or the city councillor who lobbies for cycle lanes, this book is a guide for everyone who is trying to create a more sustainable planet.

Psychology for a Better World explains how we can get others to join us. Based on the latest psychological research, Niki Harré shows which strategies work (drawing on positive emotions, role modelling and social identity), which don’t, and why. The book ends with a self-help guide for sustainability advocates that outlines how we can work for change at the personal, group and civic level.

The book is accompanied bydownload the 'Keeping What we Value in Play' supporting manual for Psychology for a Better World. 

Given that most of us spend the majority of our waking hours at work, businesses and workplaces are important targets for sustainable behaviors. "Organizations are designed to steer people toward something. They have all these levers to pull," says Elise Amel, PhD, a professor of industrial/organizational psychology and conservation psychology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. "Whether we’re talking about organizational systems or transformational leadership, I/O (industrial/organisational) psychologists can make a huge contribution."                                                                         

Read the full article here.

Ann Sanson, Susie Burke, Judith Van Hoorn, June 2018

This article draws together research on the impacts of climate change on children and youth, and suggests how parents, and parenting researchers, educators, and professionals, can engage with climate change.  Parents can support their children through actively engaging with the issue themselves and through communication and other strategies that help build children’s hope, efficacy, resilience, and engagement.

Find the journal here.

Women are most adversely affected by disasters and yet are rarely "put front and centre" of efforts to protect the most vulnerable.

Former Irish president, U.N. rights commissioner and former U.N. climate envoy, Mary Robinson, said women were most adversely affected by disasters and yet are rarely "put front and centre" of efforts to protect the most vulnerable.

"Climate change is a man-made problem and must have a feminist solution," she said at a meeting of climate experts at London's Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Entrepreneurship.

Read the full article here.

Common Cause Foundation (CCF) is the leading organisation applying the psychology of values to engage people’s concern for their communities and the wider world, their commitment to live in ways that lead to positive social and environmental change, and their support for policy interventions that deliver these outcomes. In its work, CCF highlights the fundamental connections between issues of social and environmental concern. Public support for the work of a wide range of different NGOs is inspired by a coherent set of shared values. While the environmental challenges we face are imposing and complex, an understanding of these values, and the ways that they interact, will help to build lasting public demand for systemic change.

Read their updated report: Where now for the environment movement? Weathercocks and signposts ten years on.

Want to solve climate change problems? Put women in charge, says the academic researcher, feminist, nonprofit activist, and force of nature on the issues that drive her.

At the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in New Orleans last December, Sarah Myhre, PhD, joined with other scientists on a panel presenting and fielding questions on the science, economics, and politics of climate solutions.

Read the full article here.

Today’s children will face huge environmental challenges, from climate change to oceanic pollution. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, for instance, has noted that nearly one-quarter of mammals are globally threatened or extinct. In Beasts at Bedtime, ecologist Liam Heneghan argues that books can help children deal with these grim eventualities.

S. F. Said explores a study on children’s books as preparation for planetary crises.

Read the piece here.

At KidsAgainstClimateChange.com, students post drawings and videos about topics such as greenhouse gases, melting glaciers, and energy use. And on a discussion board, they share ideas about reducing global warming.
Christie-Blick says it’s important for kids to connect with other young people on this topic

Psychology for a Safe Climate fosters emotional engagement with climate change. Their purpose is to contribute psychological understanding and support within the community, helping people face the difficult climate reality. 

Read their latest newsletter and subscribe by emailing psychologysafeclimate@gmail.com

“Don't talk about the planet. That doesn't appeal to the public. And besides the planet will be fine. It will recover in geologic time. We just won't be here. This is about humanity.”

David Fenton, founder and chairman of Fenton Communications, shares his advice on communicating about climate change.

Read the full article here.

An acerbic graphic takedown of capitalism.
In Hyper-Capitalism, cartoonist Larry Gonick and psychologist Tim Kasser offer a vivid and an accessible new way to understand how global, privatising, market-worshipping hyper-capitalism is threatening human wellbeing, social justice, and the planet.

Drawing from contemporary research, they describe and illustrate concepts (such as corporate power, free trade, privatisation, and deregulation) that are critical for understanding the world we live in, and movements (such as voluntary simplicity, sharing, alternatives to GDP, and protests) that have developed in response to the system.  In the process, they point the way to a healthier future for all of us.

Read more here.

In 2017, nearly a hundred inmates at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Washington state learned about climate change threats and disaster resilience.

Bush: “We feel that incarcerated people have been overlooked as participants in the environmental movement. We need to engage all people.”

Read the full article here.

Based on international social research, climatevisuals.org  provides seven principles and a growing library of images of climate causes, impacts and solutions from around the world, presented in partnership with some of the world’s leading photographic agencies.
Every day, thousands of images of climate change are shared around the world, but too many still depict polar bears, melting glaciers and smokestacks. These don’t tell the powerful and urgent human stories that are at the heart of the climate challenge: images of people being affected by - and responding to - climate change.