The climate crisis - Why don't people do more? And how can we make it happen? | Webinar Recording

This webinar was presented by Emeritus Professor John McClure.

As most people know, we are facing a climate crisis due to human emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The outcomes if we don’t change course are likely to be disastrous.

Yet many people seem to be relatively unconcerned about the risk. The emissions underpinning this hazard are potentially controllable, so why don’t people do more to prevent the looming outcome?

One source of this inaction is our psychology. This talk looked at these psychological factors, such as the way we perceive risk and people’s belief that nothing we do will make a difference (fatalism) or it will cost too much. The talk suggested some ways that we can counter these unhelpful tendencies.

John McClure is Emeritus professor at Victoria University of Wellington - Te Herenga Waka. After working in various roles such as freezing worker, he completed a BA and MA(Hons) at Auckland University and his doctorate at Oxford University. After a year as lecturer at Wollongong Australia, he took up his position in psychology at Victoria, eventually as professor. His research focuses on risk perception, fatalism and attributions (the way people explain events in their lives).

Date: Thursday, 6 November
Time: 7pm

The original recording of this webinar was incomplete because of technical issues. To remedy this, the webinar was re-presented in private and re-recorded. This new recording is available below:

This webinar contains questions for listeners, including questions about new ideas for how to manage climate stress - both in yourself and in the people around you. Please leave a comment on this Substack post with any ideas you have, and you can discuss them together!