Anger is most powerful emotion by far for spurring climate action

My greatest despair with climate change/chaos/and multiple disasters is that our policy makers have not and still will not do enough. It makes me angry and makes me feel powerless. Seems we all need to get angrier about this in order to provoke change. Cheryl
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Link to climate activism is seven times stronger for anger than it is for hope, say Norwegian researchers.

Anger is by far the most powerful emotional predictor of whether somebody plans to take part in a climate protest, research suggests.

The study, which asked 2,000 Norwegian adults how they felt about the climate crisis, found the link to activism was seven times stronger for anger than it was for hope. The effects were smaller for other actions, but fear and guilt were the best predictors of policy support, while sadness, fear and hope were the best predictors of behavioural change.

On average, people reported having fairly mild feelings about the planet heating.

“The problem isn’t that people feel too scared about climate change,” said Thea Gregersen, a climate psychologist at the Norwegian Research Centre and lead author of the study. “The problem, in Norway at least, seems to be that they’re not scared enough.”

A US weather balloon is prepared for launch. The balloon that recorded ‘zero-degree line’ was flown from Payerne in western Switzerland on Monday.

Zero-degree line at record height above Switzerland as heat and fire hit Europe

Faced with rising reports of ecological anxiety, psychologists across the world are racing to understand how people’s feelings about the destruction of nature affect their mental health and behaviour. But the few studies to interrogate the link between emotions and actions have shown mixed results.

“We’re nowhere near having a comprehensive understanding,” said Caroline Hickman, a climate psychologist at the University of Bath, who was not involved in the study. “If anybody presents this material confidently as certainties or pretends they’re an expert, ignore them. Run away.”

=> Read the rest of this powerful article on “The Guardian”

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