The first duo-written commentary on an issue of the CO2 Newsletter! Annie Mitchell and Tony Wainwright, both Chartered Psychologists take a deep dive into why we are where we are..
As Ana Unruh Cohen said in her contribution to this series on people’s responses to William Barbat’s “message in a bottle” CO2 Newsletter, “looking back at the history of climate science and policy can trigger wistful thoughts of “what if?” And relatable feelings of sadness about what we have lost and anger at fossil fuel and other vested interests that have fought to prevent climate and action”. Reading the well-informed 1980s (and earlier) warnings also triggers in us, as psychologists, curiosity. First, why did vested interests prevail in the 80s and why do they still, despite incontrovertible evidence of the damage caused by fossil fuels, and despite decades of efforts to raise the alarm and mitigate the harm befalling us all? Second, why do not more of our fellow citizens and scientists join in with activists’ efforts to wake us up and bring about urgent change? Third, what is it in the histories and experience of some of us that draw us, apparently against the tide, to persist in actively demanding change? Fourth, what could lead now to the positive social tipping point we so urgently need?
We’re commenting on CO2 Newsletter Vol 2, No 1, October -November 1980. Reading it now feels extraordinary because pretty much everything that Barbat notes in his commentary remains the case: both the scientific evidence that global heating is caused by CO2 emissions, and the realisation of the appalling human cost and social injustice of inaction. It is hard not to be moved by reading this newsletter: a voice from over 40 years ago, hoping people would heed his call. It is salutary to realise that atmospheric carbon concentrations since he was writing have gone up by about one third, and the trajectory has been steady, in spite of all the agreements and conferences. Infuriatingly also, as of 2025, global emissions of greenhouse gases have never been higher. Perhaps if these agreements and conferences hadn’t happened it may have been even worse. One sentence jumps out: “Adapting to a highly different climate may be inappropriate to apply to future victims of malnutrition or storm-driven high tides of an elevated ocean. ‘Sacrificed’ may be appropriate if immediate counter measures to the CO2 buildup could [as we now know they could] actually prevent such problems.”. We, like Barbat, watched the United States’ “me” decade to shift to the “we” decade: but we see, terribly, that decade is now closer to a century and escalating with Make America Great Again ferocity. We believe, along with grass roots organisations like Hope Not Hate, and Common Ground, that we humans (and indeed beings beyond human) have much more in common than that which divides us. We need to have the conversations, share the evidence, and generate the shared social narratives that prove it.
- Why do vested interests prevail?
There is no doubt that where there is wealth there is power, and fossil fuels have created more wealth than anything else we can think of. They have also brought enormous benefits to humanity, but at a terrible cost. The cost is not born by the fossil fuel companies; it is, in the woefully inadequate term, an ‘externality’ where the planet pays the price. Even now, there seems to be evidence that these malign forces have undermined the United Nations COP (Conference of the Parties) process so that binding commitments are avoided https://www.transparency.org/en/press/fossil-fuel-interests-are-undermining-un-climate-negotiations-new-transparency-international-report-warns.
Stoddart and colleagues asked in 2021 why haven’t we bent the emissions curve despite 3 decades of climate mitigation? A common thread across the literature they reviewed was the central role of power, “from a dogmatic political-economic hegemony and influential vested interests to narrow techno-economic mindsets and ideologies of control.” These narrow mindsets serve to perpetuate the very conditions that hold us still now in the worsening climate catastrophe. And we urgently need, as Stoddart et al put it, new forms of social imaginary for a better future. Does modern technology’s hypnotic capacity to distract us from beauty, imagination and awe, and from our realisation of our bodily place in the world, account in part for the lethal stranglehold of ideologies of control?
2. Why do not more of our fellow citizens join in with demanding change? It is understandable that our fellow citizens (and ourselves too because we are all only human) adopt cognitive and emotional defences – including denial, delay, disinterest – against unbearable truths. These psychological defences are hard to shift because they are bolstered by a barrage of misinformation and disinformation promulgated by the media outlets of those who believe their interests are protected by keeping the truth hidden. And who does not wish the truth to be other than it is, when we face existential horror? In his book ‘Don’t even think about it’ George Marshall, founder of Climate Outreach put his finger on it. We are not wired up to deal with climate change – it isn’t the weather, it is what you might call a derivative. It’s the system that controls the weather. In addition, George Marshall worked out that different audiences need to be addressed differently, and just producing lots of charts that predict the end of the world as we know it will just turn people off.
3. What is in the histories and experience of some of us who do persist in demanding change?
Tony: engagement with environmental issues flowed from growing up in a family where the natural world was something to be enjoyed and studied in equal measure. At school, my teacher, Brian Brookes showed me on field trips to Skokholm and Handa Islands how interconnected the web of life was. He also introduced me to the Shanny a rocky shore fish, when he was warden at Slapton Ley, and the hours spent in rock pools led me to study for my doctoral thesis in experimental psychology, the way the visual systems of fishes and other creatures are adapted to their light environment (see https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4757-0241-5_54#citeas). My broader research work included a strong interest in marine and freshwater environments, and how we should protect them. The issue of climate change only came to my attention some 20 years later when I was by then a clinical psychologist, and when I became involved with the Friends of the Earth 2005 campaign, The Big Ask, which was successful in getting legislation through the UK parliament, the first in the world, with statutory carbon limits and an annual carbon accounting. My interests had been in ecological systems and how they were being impacted by human activity, but it was only after this campaign that my attention was on the effect of CO2 emissions. The way CO2 made the oceans more acidic was quite an eye opener, particularly given my previous work on freshwater and marine animals.
Annie: my sense of being part of the natural world grew from a childhood in County Durham in an era (the 50s and 60s) in which girls growing up could roam pretty freely: helping on the local farm, climbing trees, wandering across footpaths and fields, camping under the stars, first with the Girl Guides, and later tramping the Lake District with boyfriends and girlfriends, exploring the ways our bodies and minds fitted into the natural world. Perhaps it is hard to fight for the health of the planet and nature unless we have first grown to love it. And in my story too, it was a school teacher who inspired intellectual curiosity about ecology. Dorrit Smith, a newly qualified biology teacher, was a breath of fresh air in our old-fashioned ex-grammar school that had just turned comprehensive but in which many teachers still wore dusty caps and gowns. She encouraged us to think for ourselves and to question authority, and in doing so set us a project – at a time and place when self-directed projects were an unheard-of educational approach. This project was transformational: we had to research the contribution of Rachel Carson through her newly published book, Silent Spring. From then on, I understood that ecological balance was the basis of flourishing, that corporations could mess up through corporate greed, and, vitally, that women could challenge the established order of things. These were tremendous lessons for a restless adolescent to take as a basis for life and learning, and I remain grateful for Dorrit’s then-youthful devotion to her pupils.
Everyone who comes to climate and nature activism will have their foundational stories, and we both believe that sharing and honouring these, as XR Scientists have done in their book Scientists on Survival, is a critical part of inspiring ourselves and others to persist with demanding change.
4. What could lead now to the positive tipping point we so urgently need?
Here we might take issue with some content in the newsletter:
“Q. Should the public be allowed to help decide what projects are pursued or not pursued?
“A. Generally no, if what you mean is basic scientific research….
“Most members of the public usually don’t know enough about any given complicated matter to make meaningful informal judgments. And that includes scientists and engineers who work in unrelated areas…
“… I don’t think John Doe will ever have enough information to justify technological public policymaking by public referenda.
“To make intelligent decisions about science-based technology, we will have to rely on analyses and advice from institutions that the polity trusts.”
We rather believe, along with Rebecca Willis in her book Too hot to handle: the democratic challenge of climate change, that trust requires more democracy and participation, not less. We’re unlikely to reach a positive social tipping point without much greater public knowledge, awareness and engagement. With a strong public mandate for positive progressive change, politicians and businesses would be much more likely to act against the vested interests of money and entrenched power. And on this, it is extremely inspiring in the UK to be part of the momentum movement in support of the Climate Emergency Briefing. A 50 minute film has been created, featuring 10 of the UKs most highly respected climate scientists and security experts, first shown in Westminster to parliamentarians, policy makers and leaders at the end of 2025, and now being screened in hundreds of community and professional venues across the UK, with facilitated post-show conversations to generate deeper engagement and future action. I , Annie, along with friends and neighbours, have hosted and facilitated screenings in my own community, with more still planned. This is how change can happen: hearing the truth from trusted experts, being held in community with others to process and digest what we hear, and then acting in solidarity with those others to demand the political change that survival in the face of reality requires. If only this strong public engagement had happened back in the 1980s or earlier: might we have bent the emissions curve by now? It is too hypothetical to contemplate.
In conclusion, we wonder what Barbat would have thought about the word today? The breakdown of the international consensus – the so-called “World Order” – is so far leading us down a path of might is right and further conflict, and the warning bells are ringing louder than ever before. The urgent need for “a new we order” is very much on the agenda https://globaljusticeproject.wid.world/global-justice-report/
In a book chapter entitled ‘Who are we? Social identity and sustainable healthcare in the Anthropocene’ we tackled this issue of a new ‘we’ order in the context of healthcare, in which both of us have spent our careers. We say: “How can we join together in learning and solidarity with others in protecting all that we love and care for, when people’s lives and conditions are so separate and varied, and political and nationalist forces increasingly work to divide us from one another, under conditions of threat? How can we value and celebrate the varied contributions that we bring from our different perspectives of gender, ethnic background, culture, class, and ability, while also being sensitive to the ways in which the unequal distribution of power and influence shapes whose voices are heard and unheard? How can we do this at the same time as working to halt the retreat to personal identities that divide and polarise us? As the Black critical journalist Gary Younge put it, in his 2011 book Who are we – and should it matter in the 21st century?
“Identity is not seeking a role in politics. It is already there. For better, for worse, and usually for both, it is an integral part of how we relate to people as individuals and as groups. The choice is whether we want to succumb to its perils among moral panic and division or leverage its potential though solidarity in search of common, and higher, ground.”(Younge, 2011, p. 231)
Finally, in a recent paper, Tony wrote about the implications of the polycrisis for psychologists, entitled ‘A Warning’. Which sums up in some ways the main message of our reflections: “We are at a critical juncture for the future of humanity. I don’t use these words lightly, but they echo the various presentations at the Emergency Briefing for Parliamentarians (National Emergency Briefing on the Climate and Nature Crisis, 2025) last year on the climate crisis. We cannot continue business as usual when there are such clear indications of a catastrophic future. As psychologists we need to work out what ‘not business as usual’ looks like.”
Wainwright, T. and Mitchell. A. (2024) Who are we? Sustainable Healthcare in the Anthropocene. Chapter 5. In J. Braithwaite, Y. Zurynski, & C. K-Lynn Smith (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Health System Sustainability Routledge.
Biographies
Annie Mitchell is a BPS Chartered Psychologist and former clinical psychologist born in 1953. She teaches, mentors and facilitates trainee clinical psychologists and medical students in the Southwest of England. She’s active with Psychologists for Social Change and has campaigned for climate and nature action.
Tony Wainwright is a BPS Chartered Psychologist and former clinical psychologist born in 1946. He has been a teacher and supervisor of trainee clinical psychologists over many years in the Southwest of England. He has had a long-standing interest in the natural world, and has campaigned for human rights and planetary health.