Health Psychology and Climate Change: Time to address humanity’s most existential crisis

Abstract

Climate change is an ongoing and escalating health emergency. It threatens the health and wellbeing of billions of people, through extreme weather events, displacement, food insecurity, pathogenic diseases, societal destabilisation, and armed conflict. Climate change dwarfs all other challenges studied by health psychologists. The greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change disproportionately originate from the actions of wealthy populations in the Global North and are tied to excessive energy use and overconsumption driven by the pursuit of economic growth. Addressing this crisis requires significant societal transformations and individual behaviour change. Most of these changes will benefit not only the stability of the climate but will yield significant public health co-benefits. Because of their unique expertise and skills, health psychologists are urgently needed in crafting climate change mitigation responses. We propose specific ways in which health psychologists at all career stages can contribute, within the spheres of research, teaching, and policy making, and within organisations and as private citizens. As health psychologists, we cannot sit back and leave climate change to climate scientists. Climate change is a health emergency that results from human behaviour; hence it is in our power to address it.

No agency and responsibility for the privileged? Perceptions of climate action among high socioeconomic status citizens in the United Kingdom

“…Furthermore, schools and universities can look to normalise such ideals by supporting emerging adults to explore how their future careers could be intertwined with the demand for sustainability [104] and advocate for the role they may have in promoting action via intergenerational learning [105]. Notably, this includes academics and professionals at universities, who have key roles through research, teaching, and the organisational citizenship to turn universities into role models for low-carbon organisations [106,107,108]. However, this will require stepping up for example in curbing academic air travel, breaking ties with fossil fuel investments and recruitment, and decarbonising campuses and supply chains, including university food systems [109,110].…”

How (not) to talk about plant-based foods: using language to support the transition to sustainable diets

“…In this critical transition, organisations and individual decision makers within organisations (e.g. universities, health-care providers, food service providers) have significant power to catalyse and facilitate these transformative shifts, through acting as transformative investors, role models and courageous decision makers who prioritise planetary health over the destructive behaviours associated with the status quo (38,(77)(78)(79) .…”

The “healthy = sustainable” heuristic: Do meal or individual characteristics affect the association between perceived sustainability and healthiness of meals?

“…Eating healthy and sustainable diets is a major challenge of our time [1][2][3][4][5]. There are without doubt many factors, both on an individual and structural level, that influence whether people eat in a healthy and sustainable way (e.g., [6][7][8][9][10]).…”