This page was created for participants in one of our Climate Conversations. They are our thoughts and feelings on the topic that day and should not be read as advice and may not be factual. You may find the related conversation guide helpful if you want to know more about the topic we discussed.
Climate action: transforming our values and beliefs
Good reasons not to question your beliefs
Our first discussion was around the idea that there may be good reasons not to question your beliefs at this time. Sometimes, questioning your beliefs might be unsettling, or leave you feeling lost. Our beliefs can be important to us, and letting go of them can lead to loss and impact our lives and relationships in ways we might not be able to cope with right now1.
From our conversation:
- Isn’t it better in the end to go through it?
- Beliefs are connected to our identity.
- Our relationships can be affected. Sometimes they’re built around shared beliefs.
- We may have invested a lot over time.
- Beliefs make you part of a world, part of something bigger than yourself.
- Can you overdo it? What would it be like to research everything before deciding what to believe?
- There are ways to help yourself
- Getting support
- Being kind to yourself
- At the point where you’re questioning, it’s probably already inevitable.
- It’s healthy to question your beliefs even if you end up coming back to them.
- I think of something I heard “The stronger you feel about something the more you should question it”.
How do we tackle the climate crisis?
We heard about the work of a researcher who wrote a paper about the kind of transformation we’d need to stick to the 1.5oC2
Karen O’Brien says the climate crisis is more than a technical or scientific problem. It’s a complex social and political challenge. To solve a problem like the climate crisis we need to transform our beliefs, values and mindsets. Technology alone can’t get us out of this. She says we need transformations in three areas:
- Our values, beliefs and worldviews (personal and shared).
- Our systems and social structures.
- Practical transformations (e.g. solar power).
These three areas influence and interact with each other. A change in one area can create changes in the other – or blockages and obstacles.
From our conversation:
- Does everyone need to change their views?
- There’s a lot of variation in beliefs.
- What does it mean to believe something?
- There’s a relationship between believing something and living it, for example, in wars over religion there can be a conflict between belief and actions.
- Why don’t people live by their beliefs?
- There are competing forces around us.
- There are competing forces inside us. What counts as doing good by one set of beliefs (allowing my child to fit in) conflicts with another belief (anti-consumerism).
- We make explanations for what we do. We might say we care about the environment, and do something to help it, but then justify doing other things that are bad for the environment.
- For example, we want less car use but believe cars are needed because we need better public transport. It’s a chicken and egg situation.
- We haven’t questioned the need for the current amount of travelling.
- How do we bring into being our beliefs that we’d be better off being less capitalist and consumerist and being more focused on mental health, well-being and community? How do you do that?
Thoughts at the end of the conversation
- It’s woken my brain up a little bit.
- It’s been interesting.
- Really good questions!
- It breaks things up having different contributions from different people.
- It reminds me other people have different views. It takes me away from focusing on myself.
Acknowledgements
Many ideas for this conversation came from Karen O’Brien’s academic paper Is the 1.5oC target possible? Exploring the three spheres of transformation.
Notes
- Vanessa Machado de Oliveira has a whole chapter in her book Hospicing Modernity devoted to reasons why you might not want to read further. ↩︎
- O’Brien, Karen. “Is the 1.5°C Target Possible? Exploring the Three Spheres of Transformation.” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Sustainability governance and transformation 2018, 31 (April 1, 2018): 153–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2018.04.010. ↩︎