Season 2, Episode 4: Everything You Wanted To Know About Eco Guilt

Climate Change and Happiness

image credit | Jacqueline Day

Season 2, Episode 4: Everything You Wanted To Know About Eco Guilt

Thomas and Panu discussed ecological guilt, a ubiquitous feeling many of us experience, but rarely explore deeply. Panu explained various levels of ecological guilt from small daily uneasiness about our activities and their ecological impacts to more troubling experiences of public shame and even species guilt. Thomas had insights about the levels or “volume knob” of this and other eco- and climate feelings and the societal forces at play in heightening our guilt feelings or minimizing them, and possible benefits of “ditching guilt” when it stifles our happiness and ability to take action to solve environmental problems. Panu and Thomas also recognized the paradox of having the privilege to feel guilty about issues like one’s carbon footprint and how an assumption of ecological guilt obscures other common emotional experiences about climate and environmental problems that people have around the world. What should we do about eco-guilt? Are we all climate hypocrites? Is taking action really an “antidote to despair”? Listen in on this surprisingly intriguing talk and then draw your own conclusions.

Links

• Panu and Charlie Kurth (2022). Eco-anxiety: What it is and why it matters.

• Lorriane Whitmarsch and colleagues (2022) Climate anxiety: What predicts it and how is it related to climate action?

• Tim Jensen (2019) Ecologies of Guilt in Environmental Rhetorics

• Alexis Shotwell (2016). Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times

• Sami Grover (2021) We’re All Climate Hypocrites Now

• Jennifer Uchendu on founding The Eco-Anxiety in Africa Project

• Training Event, Portland Oregon: Mastering Eco and Climate Conscious Therapy: Skills, Ethics, and Community

• Ruska: A Finnish word for bright autumn colors

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now, your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.

Thomas Doherty: Hello, I’m Thomas Doherty.

Panu Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. Our podcast. This is an international podcast, I am in the US and Panu is in Finland. My morning and Panu’s evening. And this is the show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about the personal side of climate change and the climate emergency. And in particular their emotional responses and their feelings. Much of the discourse we see is often about the facts and the information and the data and the policies. Which are highly, highly important. But we are making time here to talk about the emotion, the emotional piece, how we feel.

And today, dear listeners, we are going to talk about ecological guilt. Everything you wanted to know about ecological guilt. What is this? And how does it work? And how do we understand it? I totally understand if someone wants to turn the podcast off and, you know, maybe listen to something else. But I would ask you to stick with us and talk about this because we have wrestled with this in various directions. And it’s a very interesting topic. And we’re going to talk about it from different angles. From our various expertise. And what we’re seeing in the world and our colleagues and what’s happening in the world for others and for ourselves. Panu, do you want to talk about a range of things and then dive into one? And maybe talk about some of the recent research you’ve been doing? Where do you want to start?

Pihkala: Perhaps starting with the simple question: what is guilt? And I might ask you all — listeners also — to just take a moment and think about that. How do I understand the word guilt? And of course in various languages the connotations might be different. In my work with environmental matters, I’ve noticed varieties of guilt for a very long time. And then at some point I realized just how different people’s images about guilt are. I realized that when talking about ecological guilt, some people instantly think of very strong guilt. You know, that kind of thing when you are a kid and you notice that you’ve done something wrong and you fear that your parents will find out. And this might also very closely link to shame.

But that’s not what the scholars of ecological guilt are only about. So there may be very strong feelings, but there may also be these quiet everyday glimpses of disturbance. When we are making things and making choices which we know are not perfect for ecological matters, but then again our lives are so complex in contemporary societies that it is often very difficult to strive for any purity in matters. So that’s what I want to start with. This broad range of what we are talking about here. So not just the most intense feelings of guilt but also these fleeting disturbances we feel. And also crediting Tim Jensen who is an author who has done great work around ecological guilt. But how about you, Thomas? When did you start thinking about ecological guilt more? And what sort of variations do you have in mind when you hear the word ecological guilt?

Doherty: Yeah. Panu thanks. I mean this is really interesting. Even though, I mean, listeners should know that Panu and I do talk about this stuff. And we’ve already sort of had a pre conversation about this. But even as Panu speaks I’m understanding more about where he’s coming from. Because when I heard you talk about variations of guilt, I thought you meant guilt about different things or different kinds of feelings. But I see that you mean variations in just the intensity and awareness of guilt. So I can have really lightweight guilt or really mundane guilt. Or like serious, shameful, in front of the whole community feeling terrible kind of guilt.

You know, okay so yes as with all emotions. We’re emotional beings. We cannot be alive and not have emotions and our unique feelings. So you’re suggesting that, you know, this environmental stuff is really challenging us to just know a little bit. Make friends with guilt as a thing and how it manifests in different ways. It could be really mundane. And I think that’s helpful. I don’t often think about it that way. And maybe listeners don’t either. Just these differences — it’s like turning up the volume. A lot of times the volume is really low. Like one. And then once in a while if we see a bad news story or we really are in touch with our carbon impacts that we’re doing, then the guilt meter turns on louder.

Where I live in the US, we use electricity for power. And I’m trying to use more of that and get off fossil fuels. And making strides in my lifestyle. But, you know, my electric company sends me a notice every month with my bill and it tells me what I’m using for electricity. You know, where my electricity is going. And it’s helpful to know that I am increasing the electric use, you know, in some areas that I want to like having more of my cooking through electric versus gas. But I see that a big part of my electric use is always on appliances. It’s just these appliances that are always on. And it makes me feel guilty that I’m just, you know, having these power sources just sitting around my home that are just sucking energy all the time, not really doing anything. So to me that’s a mundane day-to-day place where I might have some eco guilt. And I’m not entirely sure what to do about that because I don’t even know what all of these appliances are. You know, if you leave your computer plugged in of course it’s sucking power. Or, you know, any number of appliances have little indicator lights that are always blinking. So, yeah. So there’s a volume level of guilt.

And then I know you’ve talked about some of these traps. These double binds. Flip side kind of things. What do you mean by that?

Pihkala: Yeah. It’s related to the sort of plasticity of guilt. You know, you can feel guilt for something that you have done. But you can also feel guilt for something you haven’t done. So for example, you get the feeling that you should have done something based on some values. And then you get some kind of guilt for not doing so. And of course our feelings of guilt when evaluated from an ethical perspective or from a psychological well-being perspective. There’s, you know, more constructive forms of guilt and less constructive forms of guilt. And I think this is very important in relation to environmental matters because there are quite complicated questions such as who should be feeling what kind of guilt and in what levels in what situations. And it’s quite easy for people to feel either too much or too little. That’s my observation. A very broad one.

I meet a lot of people with strong environmental identities. That’s a concept we have often talked about in this podcast and especially you Thomas. And for those people a pressing psychological issue is that they tend to feel quite often and quite heavily ecological guilt. But then for some other people, especially if they don’t see good ways forward from ecological guilt — if they don't see options where they could act in a more ecological way — people may distance themselves from these feelings and sometimes use numbing and trying not to care about it so much. And that’s another complicated issue that may happen.

So coming to your question, the power dynamics in our societies around ecological guilt are also highly important because there are forces which are trying either to get us to feel more ecological guilt or less ecological guilt. So that’s something I think is very important.

Doherty: Yeah. Well that’s really helpful too. I mean I was looking up just guilt definitions and, you know, it’s always helpful to remind ourselves what is the definition of a word. And guilt is seen as being responsible for something that happened. I am guilty of it. But guilt can also be a feeling of being responsible for something. Right? I might feel guilty, maybe inappropriately. Like maybe it wasn't really my fault but I still feel guilty because I feel like I contributed to it. So yes.

And then shame is the public side of that. Like how to be seen. You know, guilt is private. That’s the insidiousness about guilt as well. Like a lot of the troubling eco emotions. They isolate us and we feel it privately. It’s our private suffering. And so listeners I just want to validate that if you have private suffering about these issues, you’re perfectly normal unfortunately. You don’t have an eco disorder, it's just life because so many of us are privately suffering in so many ways through all this stuff. So yes.

And then Panu, you bring up the power thing. And that’s why I’m always weary of the eco guilt story because I don’t really want to normalize it in the sense of just saying well everybody, you know, you should all feel guilty and feel bad. Like you say, different people feel different levels of it. And I know some listeners who are environmental advocates or activists who are saying okay how do I use this now? How do I make those people that don’t have enough guilt how do I turn up their volume? And, you know, because they need to change. And unfortunately some environmental groups don’t think about the human casualties. So they don’t really care about how to turn down the volume of the people that have it over much. Because again one of the power structures is the environmental movement. Who really sees eco guilt as a lever to make societal change. And it is a kind of lever we just have to be very careful about.

Yeah, so guilt becomes this kind of lever that people want to be able to get their hands on those knobs. Those volume knobs a little bit. So, yeah.

Pihkala: Yeah. That’s a very important observation you’re making, Thomas I think. And our previous guest Sarah Jaquette Ray…

Doherty: Yes.

Pihkala: … discusses this also for example in her book Field Guide to Climate Anxiety where she sees the problems around ecological guilt being so heavy that she actually advocates “ditching guilt”. And to a certain point I totally agree. But then, of course, for people who have resources and power including me, for example, even though I’m not rich by any standards in Finnish society, guilt as responsibility, I see, has its role. But that must be combined with the caution around overly strong burdens. Especially because there are some [problematic] power structures. And trying to do so.

And that’s something that Tim Jensen in his book, Ecologies of Guilt in Environmental Rhetorics, criticizes and shows interesting examples of how some companies have used psychology in efforts to share the responsibility more to individuals and citizens. One of the more insidious ones was British Petroleum after the DeepWater Horizon oil spill: developing a public relations campaign reminding people that you know we all are using oil in some way. For example, we are driving cars. And then there’s the plastic thing. So they were very intentionally trying to distribute responsibility and guilt to citizens and individuals. And trying to divert attention away from the very serious procedural mistakes that they were making which enabled that terrible accident in the Gulf of Mexico. So this is one example of how insidious that dynamics around ecological guilt can sometimes be.

Doherty: Yeah. Exactly. And so that’s, you know, again in academic or therapy circles we talk about a critical consciousness about something versus being unconscious or uncritical. And the critical consciousness just simply means I understand there’s a whole context here of power and things that are happening. None of this happens by accident. Obviously we have marketers that want to turn down people’s eco angst, eco guilt so they’ll buy more products. And don’t worry about plastics. And don’t worry about fossil fuels. And it’s inevitable. And we need this.

In the US it’s kind of, you know, a national value to be a consumer and to use these things. And so people use all these sorts of ways of thinking. Yeah, so they do exist. There is unfortunately kind of a culture war going on around these feelings. And individuals are trapped in the middle. And part of the whole kind of ecological awakening that people have is they start to realize this. And they start to take control. So ultimately we want to be in control of our feelings. And really feel the feelings that are genuine for us. And built the capacity and ability to hold those and not just be, you know, manipulated by things.

And so, yes, carbon footprint is a real thing. Like we can think about our use of energy and we should. That’s ethical. But it has also been used as a kind of diversion. Like blaming the public. And so we have to not accept that piece. You know, this is really about structural change. Because we didn’t choose what’s in our products. We don’t choose all the plastic we get. We don’t have power over the fuel standards or what vehicles are even available for us to purchase. If we can purchase a vehicle.

Pihkala: Yeah. Indeed. And after all, reasonable guilt is based on caring. You know, if you care about something then if there’s a presumed violation or not filling your responsibility then you feel guilt. And fundamentally it’s based on care. Of course, there’s many examples where people may get feelings of guilt for the wrong reasons. But still the fundamental foundation stands I think.

And this is linked with the concept of double bind that you, Thomas, mentioned very briefly earlier and which I have been talking about in our pre conversations. That’s also something that Jensen is applying to ecological guilt. This old concept by Gregory Bateson, “double bind.” Which means that people are offered a solution which ends up perpetuating the problem. And so for ecological guilt, the most easily available option is buying environmentally friendly products. And then people get some alleviation from the guilt, but because the problems are structural the individual choices alone can’t change society. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be important, but they can’t do the whole thing. So that’s why Jensen is applying double bind here because it binds people then to experience guilt again because the problems are not going away even though people genuinely wanted to do something to solve the problems by doing these individual choices.

Doherty: Yeah it really stinks, Panu. I mean we’re stuck in these binds all the time. And that one is that marketing binds that there will be a product that will save us. Which is the whole start of a lot of this problem in the first place. So yeah so we want to really honor our feelings of guilt. That they are normal and healthy. And we want to be careful of these shadow sides.

Another shadow side is of course that we assume that everyone has eco guilt, but that might be an assumption based on our privilege or our placement because we have the, oddly enough, luxury to feel guilty. Whereas others might just be working on their survival. So that’s been a critique of Sarah, our previous guest, who has talked about this in her work. That’s been a critique that eco guilt is a white upper class, upper middle class phenomenon. And it ignores, you know, African Americans. People of Color. You know, social movements around the world. The Global South. People have been working on social change. They don’t have the luxury of feeling guilty. They’re trying to take action. And so it kind of obscures a lot of people’s experience if we just assume everyone has eco guilt. That’s kind of a faulty assumption. So we want to think about that side too.

Pihkala: Yeah definitely. That’s a hugely important point. And it may be related to complex dynamics in the industrialized world about so-called colonial guilt. You know, these feelings are related to what societies have been doing in history and partly still are doing. And then that may become joined with the ecological issues type of thing. So it can lead to quite a lot of complications and sometimes also then efforts among the privileged people also to distance themselves from guilt. And it also comes back to a very fundamental theme in our podcast which is that people in various contexts should have the right and encouragement to use emotional words which they think are suitable for what they are feeling. So no hegemony here of trying to define a universalizing vocabulary that everybody should use, but instead paying respect to contextual matters. And also different languages.

It’s also highly interesting that generally in relation to guilt, various languages and cultures have many differences. So it's also fascinating that the basic conceptions in a culture about guilt and shame may be quite different.

Doherty: Yeah. And so that’s another interesting thing about the idea of emotions. That some of them are relatively universal across different cultures and others are quite unique. And then different cultures. You know, you talked about Jennifer Uchendu. The Nigerian researcher is talking about folks in other countries. And so this isn't just, you know, limited to people in Europe and the US and Canada and the UK. You know, there are people around the world who have some privilege. And have some standing. And are aware of their carbon footprints in all cultures and in all countries. Thinking about how this plays out in each nation based on the nation’s history. Colonialism. Being either a colonizer or a colonized. That’s a whole other piece to this. That, you know, makes it more unique to each listener where they’re placed.

In addition to the knobs and where we turn up and down these feelings you hinted at. Other kinds of related feelings. So we hurt where we care. If we’re guilty it’s because we have values. Something that we know is being threatened. So that other image for emotions is like a train. It’s like I might pick one car of the train and say I’m feeling this, but there are many other emotions that are part of this train that I’ve probably felt in advance of feeling the guilt. So listeners, you know, you’re not going to feel guilty unless you have other feelings first like care. Like responsibility. Like love. You know, so there are a lot of positive feelings hidden inside guilt.

Pihkala: Yeah that’s profoundly put Thomas I think. And for eco emotions, sadness is very often intertwined with guilt, also. When we see news about environmental damage, for example, it often evokes both some kind of sadness and some kind of guilt, for example. So, that’s one example of how different emotions need attention.

We have been hinting at shame a couple of times. And, just to clarify, of course there are various ways to define these concepts, but quite often the differentiation is made so that shame is more related to what we perceive ourselves to be more essentially. And guilt is more related to our actions or inactions. And also there might be ecological shame and climate shame, for example, if it gets to the level that we think that we are deficient in relation to ecological issues and climate issues. And the so-called “species shame” may be quite paralyzing if we think that humanity is just flawed. And so that may be quite damaging for any motivation to do repair. But not in all cases.

Some people have fleshed out also constructive possibilities in shame. It’s more difficult to achieve, but they may happen. For example if we have a group which makes the evaluation that “we have been acting in a way which is at least partly shameful”. And then as a group they decide that hey we want to be honorful again and that’s why we will do this and that. So they engage in changing their behavior in some sort of reparation, also. Doing new things in a new way. And this I see, for example, in the Finnish climate organization called Climate Grandmothers [Aktivistimummot]. So they haven’t succumbed to any climate shame, but they have made the evaluation that hey hmm actually people of all ages should make different value choices. And then they are moving forward.

Doherty: Yeah. So gratitude comes in. I’m guilty but I’m also thankful for what I’ve had and I want to share. There’s a sense of — I’m not sure what the emotion is that’s associated with that urge to want to share what you have. But I know that there must be an emotional word for that in many languages. This sense of sharing abundance. Wanting to have the greater good. Thinking about the greater good.

So, again, with all these emotions you can think of it either as a train of emotions or, you know, the outward emotion is like the flower, but there’s roots to the emotion. You know, that has all these other feelings. And so, that gets into the idea of working with people who are coping. It’s about emotional regulation, right? And we can kind of move with different feelings and kind of regulate our emotions a little bit so we’re not just suffering and powerless.

And then I think toward the end here we have to get to the action piece because we’ve hinted at that too and what is the link between eco guilt and taking action, as you’re saying. We have to be careful there because, you know, you shared - I learned about a book today talking to Panu. Sami Grover’s book We Are All Climate Hypocrites Now. Right? Embracing our limitations can unlock a powerful movement, you know. It’s essentially getting past this climate hostage, carbon footprint guilt dilemma and saying yes, we all are embedded and let’s move forward. Let’s get past that. And let’s take action. So, the Zeitgeist is moving forward on this. Like we’re always moving forward on this, but what does it mean when we say, you know.

A lot of people are saying the antidote to eco anxiety is taking action. So that’s also part of the Zeitgeist now too. And you hear it in all these news stories. Take action, you’ll feel better. But it isn’t that simple. And that’s another way where people are trying to get a hold of our knobs. And like say oh you’re guilty, take action. Either let me sell you this product. Or let me recruit you to my environmental program. To put it simply: this can lead to action and action can be an antidote, if the action has meaning for people. Right? If it makes sense. So, if I’m taking action, it makes my life feel significant. If it gives people purpose. Like the listener, if it gives you a purpose. If you feel like you’re suffering makes sense because you’re channeling your suffering into something useful and it makes sense and for some reason there’s a reason for why you suffered. Because of your privilege, your suffering allowed you to take action and that makes you have a sense of purpose. And it makes you feel significant, then yes, your action will make you feel better. But if someone is just thrust into action without understanding why they’re doing it and what it means. And whether they can do it or not, then you’re just being manipulated yet again.

Pihkala: Yeah. Yeah, it can be a tricky thing if you are trying to achieve acceptance just by doing. This links with many themes in my background. In the work with religion, you know, these dynamics are very often discussed. And sometimes also environmental communicators like George Marshall have taken a look towards religious communities. And the ways in which these communities sometimes manage both to encounter people’s feelings of guilt and shame and provide a sort of communal liberation from that. Often through some kind of promise to do good in the future. So there’s a kind of combination of so-called absolution and commitment to trying to make a change.

I would also emphasize the structural dimension here. Sami Grover’s book which I just got is a very interesting one. There’s another called Against Purity. Which is highly important in reminding us that we can’t be completely pure. And if we try to do so we end up in more problems actually. So together with other people recognizing that we are part of this system. We shouldn't let others say that we are hypocrites. Or we shouldn’t let others demand that we would have to move outside societies to be able to criticize the society where we are living. But sort of accepting this implicatedness and this impurity in a way. And still trusting that we can together make a difference. That would be sort of my take on this.

Doherty: Yeah this is great. And, you know, listeners I learn a lot from my conversations with Panu. And I know Panu learns some things too. So, yeah this idea is against purity. You know, this book Living Ethically in Compromised Times by Alexis Shotwell. You know, we’re going to wrap up. Panu brought in at the very end a very important elephant in the room which is religion and spirituality. Which of course as someone who grew up in the Roman Catholic faith, you know, this guilt is entwined with many kinds of religions in various ways. So listeners can think about that’s yet another angle on guilt in general as a feeling. How it plays into your spiritual or religious tradition.

But we talked about a bunch of things. You know, everything you wanted to know about eco guilt. So I hope this was helpful for people. It is a feeling. It is a normal feeling. It’s linked to other really healthy and positive feelings like caring and ethics. And, you know, there’s different levels of it. The real mundane, little levels that we have. And then these really, really heavy levels. And there’s all the power structure at play. So we need to kind of stand on our own two feet here. And, yes our guilt can be fuel for action if it gives us meaning and gives us purpose. And helps things to make sense. So a really good discussion yet again, Panu. I really appreciate it.

Pihkala: Likewise Thomas. Likewise.

Doherty: And I know you have a busy week. And you’re preparing for a television appearance did you say? Or a media appearance tomorrow?

Pihkala: Yeah. In the Finnish television there's a discussion series about various ecological issues. So that’s on the list tomorrow morning. Now it’s evening in Helsinki and we have some nice autumn colors, the ruska in the Finnish language. The word which means bright autumn colors. So it’s time to go outside for a walk in the evening. And I know you, Thomas, have the day ahead of you and various things to do.

Doherty: Yeah, I’m looking forward to doing a conference event this weekend that’s in person. Where I’ll be able to talk about these things with a large group of people and it’ll be nice to be off of zoom and off of the screen and actually with people. And here in the Pacific Northwest it’s a rainy morning. It’s raining right now. It’s that unique time of the year where we’re used to it being dry here so my backyard is full of outdoor gear that we’ve been using like our wetsuits for going to the ocean that were drying. But now, of course, they’re all wet because it’s raining. And that’s just the way it is in the Pacific Northwest in the fall. So the seasons are turning. So we’ll be in touch with more. Listeners, thank you so much for your time. You can reach us at climatechangeandhappiness.com. You can send us messages and let us know how these episodes are landing for you. And be aware of all of your emotions. And you all take care.

Pihkala: Take care.