Silencing is the Real Crime: Youth and Elders Talk About Climate

ABSTRACT

Climate conversations held in the UK with youth, with elders, and then with the youth and elders together (an intergenerational group) are analyzed. Youth were consciously aware of, knew about, were very emotionally troubled by, and were taking action on the climate emergency. Elders were less informed, wavered between and within themselves between disavowal and awareness of climate impacts. Difficulties with managing guilt featured in both age groups, with the youth showing more depressive reparative guilt and the elders more paranoid-schizoid, avoidant, and blaming guilt, which made it difficult for them to listen to and support the youth in the first intergenerational group. Elders were more supportive in the second meeting with youth. Some seemed shocked at their initial lack of interest, empathy, and support and by realizing how grim the youth were at times feeling. The youth conversations, explored in detail, reveal remarkable resilience in staying mindful when faced both with climate reality and with being silenced by a culture of uncare. Youth are aware that climate reality (both physical and social) affects their mental health. Main conclusions are it is vital to talk about climate, but also vital not to underestimate the emotional effects of being silenced when we do speak up; that climate reality can at times be too much for mind to bear, and a supportive group is needed to help to bear it: the issue is preserving the very capacity to think.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate conversations
• moral injury
• climate guilt
• resilience
• intergenerational conversations
• silencing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. My involvement with this research was inspired by Bill McKibben’s Third Act project that seeks to mobilize elders, with their power and experience, to taking action on climate.

2. Caroline would go on to be the lead author, with Elizabeth Marks, of the highly influential report on the survey on what 16- to 25-year-olds world-wide were feeling about climate (Marks and Hickman 2021).

3. None of the youth had met any of the elders beforehand, but some—not all—in each group already knew each other.

4. All 18 conversations can be heard online, together with a summary of the project’s main findings. https://climateconversations.portal.fora.io.

5. The wider pilot study used a different qualitative research methodology developed by Local Voices Network: https://cortico.ai/platform/.

6. Dr. Rebecca Nestor and Dr. Marion Neffgen.

7. The danger is being caught up in and succumbing to a perverse organization.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sally Weintrobe

Sally Weintrobe is chair of the Climate Committee of the International Psychoanalytical Association.