Our group of speakers will address collective trauma and the polycrisis. Moderated by Sarah Jaquette Ray, the speakers will discuss how the climate crisis has been mobilized in service of authoritarian nationalism, anti-immigrant xenophobia and misogyny.

Through an interview format, our speakers will explore a range of questions: how we’ve gone from the IRA to this moment, where the right wing has decisive power? How do concepts of climate distress, alienation, collective trauma, identity and identification help us understand the emotional dynamics of this moment? How do anti-immigrant and misogyny arise within climate change or environmental discourse? And perhaps most importantly, how do we stay open, build connection and support a solidarity based movement, imperfect as those solidarities may be?

This event will include a still-updating handful of influential speakers discussing how did we get here and what do we do?

Meet the speakers

-Finn Does (UC Berkeley, '28 and a Climate Justice Organizer, Environmental Educator, & Climate Mental Health Advocate) is student-organizer, fighting for climate literate schools, a Green New Deal and to make climate action a part of American identity. He's focused on addressing the climate emergency through youth inclusion, worker rights, and accessible solution-framed climate communications. He's concerned about climate change as a threat-multiplier, crisis of communication, economic depressor, mobility and international security issue, and an ever intensifying psychological storm. He was co-chair of the Bay Area Youth Climate Summit, for which he is now an advisor.

-Dr. Joseph A. Henderson is an educational anthropologist specializing in environmental and climate change education. His research explores how sociocultural, political, and geographic factors shape climate change teaching and learning. He holds faculty appointments at the University of Vermont and Paul Smith’s College of the Adirondacks. His current research focuses on how climate change education is implemented across federated education systems, and he contributes to this work as a member of the Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) Project. Additionally, he investigates the relationship between shifting gender norms in environmental education and broader social trends worldwide

-Dr. Nikki Hoskins, MDiv., PhD

Nikki Hoskins has been teaching at the Harvard Divinity School since 2024. Her work attends to Christian histories of colonial, racial, and environmental domination. With the support of the Louisville Institute’s First Book Grant for Scholars of Color, Hoskins is completing a book manuscript, “Blackness Weathered: Decolonial Ethics for the Earth,” where she researches the religious and ecological practices of Black women in Chicago’s Altgeld Gardens, an area sociologists identify as one of the most egregious cases of environmental racism in the U.S. Hoskins is a member of the Society for the Study of Black Religion, the Society of Christian Ethics, and on the editorial board of Black Women and Religious Cultures. She has earned several fellowships for her graduate research, including the Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship, the Louisville Institute Fellowship, and the Forum for Theological Education Fellowship.

-Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray (she/her) is a professor and chair of the Environmental Studies Department at Cal Poly Humboldt. She works at the intersection of social justice and climate emotions, particularly among youth activists and in higher education.

Ray is author of two books, The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture (Arizona, 2013), on the emotion of disgust in environmentalism and its implications for social justice, and A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet (California, 2020), an existential toolkit for the climate generation. She has co-edited multiple volumes bridging social justice and environmentalism, including Latinx Environmentalisms: Justice, Place, and the Decolonial, and Disability Studies & the Environmental Humanities. Another on how to center the big emotions of climate change in the classroom is The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators: How to Teach in a Burning World (UC Press, 2024).

-Dr. Jade S. Sasser is Associate Professor in the Departments of Gender & Sexuality Studies and Society, Environment, and Health Equity at the University of California, Riverside. She received her PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work explores how environmental problems such as climate change and toxic exposures intersect with reproductive bodies, health, and rights. Her first book, On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women’s Rights in the Era of Climate Change, was published in 2018 by NYU Press and won the Emory Elliott book award. Her new book, Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future (2024), analyzes the relationship between climate emotions, social inequality, and reproductive anxiety in the U.S. She also has a podcast with the same name.

-Rebecca Weston, LSCW, JD is Co-Executive Director of CPA-NA and is a psychotherapist, photographer, and activist living in metro-New York. In her clinical practice, her work is informed by a recognition that our senses of self, connection, and our sense of capacity are powerfully influenced by both internal and systemic aspects of our lives. She has expertise in attachment and trauma. As a long time social activist with deep roots in clinical practice, Rebecca believes that emotion carries a story that is at once private and social; that change is at once individual and collective.

and more speakers to come!

Continuing Education Credits are available!

"Climate Psychology Alliance - North America is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Climate Psychology Alliance - North America maintains responsibility for this program and its content."

Please reach out to us with questions and to request CE credit for this event.

REGISTER HERE

Information on CE’s

Email barbaraeasterlin@climatepsychology.us to sign up for CE’s.

Learning Objectives for “Unnaming Climate: Authoritarianism, Collective Trauma & Imperfect Solidarity”

1. Participants will be able to explain how deep alienation, vulnerability and insecurity resulting from economic fears, lost identity, eroding sense of embodied community can be manipulated by powerful authoritarian figures with whom people can identify.  

2. Participants will be able to recognize subtle subtexts within climate discourse that exacerbate both powerlessness and misdirected blame. 

3. Participants will be able to use their skills as clinicians to address splits within the climate movement and foster flexible and open spaces in which people can learn collaborative and community based ways of addressing fear and insecurity. 

Instructional Level: Introductory

References: 

Daggett, C. (2018). Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire. Millennium, 47(1), 25-44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829818775817

Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. Farrar & Rinehart.

Hendersen, J. Long, D., & Henderson, J. (2023). Climate change as superordinate curriculum? Research in Education, 117(1), 73- 87. https://doi.org/10.1177/00345237231160080 (Original work published 2023)

Hoggett, P. (2023). Paradise Lost? The Climate Crisis and the Human Condition. Simplicity Institute.

Sasser, J. (2024). Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future. University of California Press

Weintrobe, S. (2021). Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis: Neoliberal Exceptionalism and the Culture of Uncare (Psychoanalytic Horizons). Bloomsbury Academic.

Additional Reference: Ricky Lanuse, Climate Change and the Rise of Authoritarian Regimes

Continuing Education: CPA-NA is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. CPA-NA maintains responsibility for this program and its content. While the APA-approved sponsorship allows CPA-NA to offer continuing education (CE) programs for psychologists, MFT’s, Social Workers, and other licensed mental health clinicians in most states, however, it’s essential to confirm with your state’s licensing board whether they accept CE credits earned from APA-approved sponsors.

CE Credits: Participants in this course, “The Climate Emotions Mandala Project: A Creative Call to Action”, are eligible for 1.5 hour of APA sponsored CE’s

CE Requirements: As an accredited and approved provider of CE, CPA-NA requires learners who want CE credit to:

Verify that you have attended the complete program. While this workshop may be recorded, viewing the recording will not qualify you for a CE certificate. You must attend the live event.

 -Complete the CE program evaluation.

 -Pass the CE quiz with a minimum score of 80%.

A link to the attendance verification form, post-program evaluation, and CE quiz will be provided to you at the end of the course. Once completed, your CE certificate will be sent to you within 30 days unless there is urgency. Please email barbaraeasterlin@climatepsychology.us if you require your CE certificate sooner.

Cancellations: Please email info@climatepsychology.us for refund requests up to 24 hours before event. Cancellations received within 24 hours or during the presentation will not be refunded.

Grievances: All grievances must be in writing and sent to info@climatepsychology.us and will be responded to within 14 business days.

ADA accommodations: Closed captioning can be provided upon request.

Conflict of interest statement: There is no known commercial support for this program and no known conflicts of interests for this workshop.