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This is a blog to communicate various discussions and views that happen in the department around the topic of sustainability. It is written from the point of view of the Green Champion.
21st November 2024
Yesterday we had a Sustainability Pizza Lunch in the staff common room. This was well attended and we had a very lively discussion on a topic which was chosen by one of our PhD students, Teresa Lee:
"How climate change has impacted our mental health in day-to-day life (whether it is through the idea of climate or air pollution), and explore how we can apply our skillsets in STEM to solve these problems?"
As a group, we discussed the ways that people can feel powerless to do anything about climate change, especially when their campaigning is met with hostility, and even inprisonment. We talked about individual responsibility vs collective/governmental management of sustainability, and how mental health might be improved if governments took more responsibility and the burden of solving issues as opposed to leaving it up to a few dedicated individuals to take on more than is humanly possible, and relying on populations to manage their own lives to revolve around lower emissions when this is not realistic given that the population as a whole has many different priorities and climate change can feature quite low on that. There was a mention of the problem of poverty in relation to sustainable choices, and that the harsh economic reality of life can have a negative effect on people's ability to choose the sustainable option. The answer to this is perhaps more collectivisation in living arrangements to enable energy sharing and efficiency. We considered the possibility of empowerment of climate activists, and how this could be achieved. It was felt that the present situation was very disempowering and that climate activists are given harsher punishments for their actions than people who hurt people. My own view on this is that we need to shift mindsets to change the hierarchical structure of power relations on this topic. Climate activists are often on the ground, in a prone or supine position, with authority towering over in a violent way. Instead, I think climate activists should be elevated and taken seriously. This can start with climate activists realising their own inherent power which we all possess, and harnessing that in a certain way to achieve results in ways that effectively interact with the structures they have identified as problematic. It was also discussed that the people who are continuing to allow the climate degradation and pollution for their financial gain could be considered murderers of future generations. We talked about the ways that business incentives need to shift in order to reward sustainable practices to flourish, and how this would likely require an economic shift in favour of climate points having a higher value than the current status quo. Lawsuits for deaths from pollution was mentioned as a monetary way of identifying responsible organisations and therefore ensuring change occurs.
Written by Stephanie Jane Dickinson.