Our other panelists this afternoon is Dr. Mick Smyer
Mick actually taught for a
little while at Penn State and Rachel was one of Mick's students at Penn State
and Cheryl Kaus our retiring Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences was also
one of Mick's students and Cheryl will hopefully be with us at some point today
she had to go home because her furnace was broken
normally in April you wouldn't worry much about that but climate change seems
to have changed that and she'll be back with us in a bit
Dr. Smyer after being at well before going to Penn State he earned his
undergraduate degree in psychology at Yale University and then he went on to
get a degree in Clinical and Social Psychology at Duke University after Penn State
he became the Vice President I just lost what I have he became the
Vice President of Research at Boston College not University Boston College big
difference he was there for a number of years head of research at that
university then he became the Provost at Bucknell University and he spent about
seven or eight years as Provost it sometimes seemed like 10 years he was
telling us earlier but it wasn't so bad he stepped down as Provost back into his
Psychology position and now he's changed kind of his encore careers studying how
climate change intersects with older adults but specifically how older adults
can be champions of sustainability and climate action
so first I want to thank
Dave and and his colleagues for having me here I'm reminded of a story of
Lyndon Johnson many years ago when he was President he had a dinner at the
White House and he was sitting at one end of the table and he had Bill Moyers
one of his assistants sitting at the other end and Bill was a Minister and he
asked Moyers to say grace before the meal Moyers started praying and Johnson
said speak up I can't hear you Moyer's looked up and said
I'm not talking to you as Dave said I work on a project called Gray In Green
Climate Action For An Aging World and the premise behind Gray In Green is very
simple there are two global patterns that are going on it's time to look at
the intersection of those two the first is we're an aging country in an aging
world about 60 million older adults in the US 60 and over right now projected
to be a hundred million by mid-century worldwide a billion right now sixty and
over two billion by mid-century three billion by the end of the century so
we're an aging country in an aging world aging as a growth field but we're also a
world that's struggling with climate change I don't need to tell this
audience a lot of the facts and figures 97% of climate scientists know that
climate change is real it's happening and if anything its effects are
accelerating much more quickly than our climate models had predicted but
interestingly enough most climate scientists haven't thought about the
connection between these two patterns for the last three years I've been
working on this project Gray In Green and when I talked to climate scientists I
pitched them about the importance of the intersection of population aging and
climate change and I get a one-word answer you know what that word is huh
now the first time I did that I thought oh this is not going well and then I
realized huh is science talk for that's not crazy I just never thought about it
because what I'm asking people to do is to think about older people not solely
as victims of climate change as Rachel focused on in her presentation
two-thirds of the mortality in Hurricane Sandy were people 65 and over but I'm
thinking about the other part of the older adults that is older adults not
only not solely as victims of climate change but as potential leaders of
climate action and that's the focus of my efforts in Gray In Green so what I
want to do today is to ask a simple question when it comes to climate change
how do we break our silence on climate change how do we break our habitat of
silence on climate change now to answer that question I turn to an important
Applied Behavioral Scientist Warren Buffett The Omen from Omaha who said
chains of habit are too light to be felt and to their until they're too
heavy to be broken if you remember nothing else from this part of the talk
just remember the word habit because we've gotten into some climate habits
and I'm going to show you some of the habits we have right here in your area
with some data these data come from a website called The Climate Advocacy Lab
anybody look at the Climate Advocacy Lab anybody know that website great it's a
great website free it provides a lot of information on climate issues and one of
the source of information is the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
and what the Yale folks have done is they they have an app on the Climate
Advocacy Lab so that you can enter your zip code or your congressional district
and you can download public opinion data on a variety of climate issues down to
your congressional district or your county or your zip code so I said how
about Atlanta County New Jersey where Stockton is what do folks here think
about climate change you with me so far does it make sense
so what do we find we find that 73% of folks in this county let's see if I can
do this seventy-three percent of folks in this
county there we go seventy-three percent of folks in
Atlantic County know that climate change is happening this compares to 75 percent
in New Jersey so you're a little behind but not far and a little ahead of the
rest of the United States so almost 3/4 of the folks who live here
in Atlantic County know that something's going on and a little over half say yes
it's caused mostly by human activities but only half
know that most scientists think global warming is happening so about half of
the folks who live in this county don't know that 97 or 98 percent of climate
scientists attribute global warming to human activity
turns out that's a gateway belief once people know that degree of scientific
consensus they start to think differently themselves about climate
change on the other hand great level of trust of scientists in this community
Stockton's faculty are doing something right
now on the other hand when we ask what
what percentage discuss global warming at least occasionally it's only a third
discuss with their family members or friends global warming it's only a third
that compares to the United States figure about 35% so as a nation we know
something's going on but we don't talk about it does that sound familiar and it
turns out older adults rates are similar to these rates I asked the Yale
folks to analyze their data by generation they've never thought about
it they by the way were the first audience that I pitched my project to
they were the first ones who said huh and then they said but wait you know we
could analyze the data by generation and they've done that showing that the
boomers are as concerned but also as silent as the Silent Generation and the
Millennials on this topic so that's the habit avoidance Charles Duhigg has
talked summarized social science research on the development of habit and what he
suggests is that we have a cue that leads to a routine that leads to a
reward when it comes to climate issues here's how it works
the cue is let's talk about climate science or you see something on TV it
says the glaciers are melting we have droughts we have floods and what
do we do our routine is too big to worry about what
can one person do I'm not gonna think about it and the reward is my anxiety
decreases if I block it out I don't have to worry about it does that sound
familiar I'm a psychologist I can help you with
denial now psychology says any kind of habit
loop this is a figure from Angela Duckworth and her colleagues says well
we can do several things one we can change the appraisal cognitively or we
can change the situation and over the next few minutes what I'm going to show
you is what we've been doing with Gray In Green how do we help people
reappraise and act on the knowledge that they already have if almost 3/4's of your
fellow citizens in this county know that climate change is happening and over
half know it's human-caused but less than 1/3 are talking about it that's a great
opportunity you can move them from anxiety to action to habit on
climate change and the key from according to the National Academy of
Sciences is very simple the key is to make your message social short and
positive kind of like me social short and positive social in terms of focusing
on people or places that you care about short in terms of time frame don't talk
about your carbon footprint 10,000 years from now because we're not wired to
think that way and then positive focus on something that you can do social
short and positive now in Gray In Green we make an assumption that we're each on
a climate journey and we feel better when we know where we are in that
journey and what our next step is for example my journey started in 2005 why
2005 because I was born and raised in New Orleans and what happened in 2005
Hurricane Katrina right and I wasn't living in New Orleans at the time but it
doesn't matter if you were born and raised in New Orleans when Katrina hit
it was a punch to the gut it was a real heartbreak to see my
hometown flooding now if you think of Louisiana I don't know you probably
don't think of Louisiana but when you do this maybe the image that comes to mind
the boot right on a map you could identify that as Louisiana right that's
what I used to think my home state look like that's what I like to think my home
state looks like but in fact this is what Louisiana looks like and it looks
this way because the wetlands have been decimated through a combination of
natural and human causes there's a thing called the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet
MRGO and MRGO was a shortcut to get the shipping to the Gulf more quickly
turns out one of the byproducts one of the unintended consequences was that a
decimated wetlands and what do wetlands do they protect they weaken hurricanes
when they come ashore and protect the Gulf Coast
so my climate journey started in 2005 when Katrina hit and then it accelerated
a little over two years ago with the arrival of the best-lookin grandkids in
the world let's say that Gus and Bailey my twin grandsons who are now 2 and
wouldn't stand still for a picture like this and then accelerated again about
three months ago with the arrival of their cousin Teddy so what are these
kids have to do a climate change well for me now it's very simple I can
envision very easily what their climate will be like when they are as my
daughter says my age in 65 years so now it's no longer hypothetical I know that
the world I'm leaving to Bailey Gus and Teddy is not the world that I grew up in
and it gives me a great motivation to work now I'm lucky I work at Bucknell and
I've been able to for several years go to New Orleans on Katrina rebuilding
trips this is a group of Bucknell students I'm holding a piece of king
cake because it's Mardi Gras season we're doing
Katrina rebuild in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans I'm lucky I was able to
act on my anxiety and do something positive but enough about me let's talk
about you going to ask you to do a short experiment if you have something to
write with this would be good if not you can just do this mentally you ready this
is the wake up part I'm going to make four simple requests of you you ready
for the first first picture a place any place in the world that has a special
meaning to you whoops picture a place any place in the world that has a
special meaning to you got that place in mind picture a place second picture that
place effected by extreme weather or climate change picture that place
effected by extreme weather or climate change you have that threat in mind
third picture that place in 40 to 50 years not how you think it'll be but how
you'd like it to be what your aspiration is for that place picture that place how
you'd like it to look in 40 to 50 years okay fourth and final request picture
something you can do now to work towards that vision you have 40 to 50 years from
now picture something you can do now to work towards that vision you have 40 to
50 years from now how many people here have a place they care about the rest of you
don't have a place well let me ask you a different way how many people don't have
a place you care about okay I've done this with hundreds of people I've only
had one person who said there's no place I care about and he's kind of a
curmudgeon so let's call him Art I said Art what do you mean he said well I
don't care about any place except where my kids are so we were your kids he said
San Francisco and Washington I said so you got two places
everybody's got a place they care about everybody knows what the threat is I've
done this with hundreds of people and everybody knows what they'd like it to
look like how many people said to themselves
I'd like it to look like just what it looks like now I'd like it to stay the
same yeah okay how many people said I'd like it to look like what it used to
look like 40 or 50 10 or 20 years ago okay that's really good usually older
people are the ones who say 10 or 20 years ago because we're living climate
memory but those are the two big answers either stay the same or go back rewind
the film a little bit but how about that fourth question something you can do now
to work towards that vision that you have how many people were stumped by
that question didn't know what to do with that okay I'm a clinical
psychologist if I just left you anxious that's good for business but not good
for climate action so remember I said that the key to climate communication is
social short and positive and the requests I just made of you are social
short but not quite positive yet social we focused on people in places you care
about short in terms of time frame I asked you to think about 40 to 50 years
but my experience with is that that last question what can you do about it
depending upon the audience somewhere between 50 to 80 percent of people are
stumped and that's where the next phase of Gray In Green comes in if I just
left you with that it wouldn't be good for climate action
so we developed a card sorting process called your climate journey and this is
when I do this in a workshop the whole thing takes about an hour and what I do
is I hand people a deck of cards climate cards and the first four cards
are the title card your climate journey but then we have three category cards
things I already do things I could do and no way things I either cannot or
will not do and I ask people to sort 30 climate actions into those three
categories things I already do things I could do and no way either I cannot or
will not do that now if I were to do this with you
individually it might take 10 15 minutes at the most I did it with Rachel over
coffee it took us less than that but she was
drinking caffeinated coffee but with those categories we do three things one
is we ask people to first focus on the no way pile and I make a promise to
people I'm not going to badger you I'm not
going to say do those things but I just asked them to compare with their
neighbors no way piles does anybody have exactly the same no way piles and it
turns out rarely do people have exactly the same things that are in there no way
piles why is that important psychologists would call this individual
differences I just say we're each on an individualized climate journey and
what's in my no way pile may be different from my spouses or my friends
or my co-workers then I turn to the things I already do pile and I have
people do two things first I have them count up the number of things they're
already doing there is a line of psychological research that suggests
that I look at my behavior and I figure out what my values are by counting up
the number of things I'm doing I find out gee I must care about this for
example there are 30 cards in the pile the number of things that people do in
workshops that I've done all over the country range from 3 to 23 it's pretty
interesting I haven't had anybody do more than 23 23 is a lot but by the time
that people have counted it up they realize but I must care about this I'm
doing a lot and then I have them turn over the cards I thought because we want
to track our carbon impact because of the impact of co2 on greenhouse gases so
on the back of each card is the carbon impact of each of those steps and I ask
people to find the one thing that they're doing that has the biggest
carbon impact and it's pretty interesting because pretty soon the
tables and the workshops get competitive and they want to get triple credit for
having hybrid cars if there are three at the
table they want three credits not just the one credit but the point is there's
a lot of peer interaction and peer education about the impact of different
activities by the time they're through with the things I already do pile but
then we get to the the middle pile the things I could do pile then I ask them
to do one thing pick one thing and move it from could do to will do as an 81
year old woman said to me recently you want me to move that from could do to
will do of course she then went on to say I'm
not going to do it she was a pip but with that one thing that they say
they will do then we move on to making them SMART our people familiar with
SMART goals specific measurable achievable relevant and time-bound
that's what we do in Gray In Green we try to give people the capacity develop
a SMART goal around their next step on their climate journey and the way we do
that is by a combination of behavioral economics and psychology we have a
climate commitment form in which we ask people to identify first of all what's
their next step for example if you said I had somebody tell me I'm going to
plant a tree I said great write that down into the on the form and then I
asked her what's the schedule went by when are you gonna plant that this was
last spring she said I'm going to plant it in the next two months I said why two
months she said because my grandkids are coming and I want them to plant it with
me great so she's got a goal she's got a timetable but before that I asked her
who are you gonna tell who's your buddy who's your accountability buddy she said
she was going to tell her husband could be a friend could be a spouse could be a
co-worker it turns out they're just telling one other person increases the
odds that you will carry out that activity just making that public
commitment and then the last part of the contract is kind of a fun part I asked
them to picture a person or an organization whose mission values and
goals they do not agree with got the picture and then how much money write
that down and then how much money they give to that person or organization
if they don't carry out the goal on the timetable that they've just set for
themselves yeah that nervous laughter is usually what we get for example I did a
workshop in State College Pennsylvania the home of the Pennsylvania State
University and one of the participants said he would give $50.00 to the Ohio
State University if he didn't carry out his goal on the timetable that he that
he set now it turns out when we do this 80 percent of the people who say I can
follow up with them actually carry through and complete their goal and
those of you who do intervention research know that an 80 percent success
rate is extremely high for this kind of simple intervention so that's the idea
behind Gray In Green social short and positive leveraging the growing resource
of older adults not solely as victims of climate change but as potential leaders
of climate action why focus on older adults because we have time and we have
talent and we have a sense of concern for future generations we also have
developed three other steps beyond the workshop itself first we have a train
the trainer's approach where I can train people in a webinar in a little under an
hour to actually run the workshops in their own circles of influence for
example right now we're doing some work with churches in Massachusetts I trained
one or two people from the church and they can run it in their own
congregation secondly we have a kids version of the of the card deck the only
problem with the kids version is that people steal them especially
grandparents they're very shifty so I have some but I will only show them to
you under my supervision we're we develop these for use in classrooms but
also with families it leads to really interesting discussions within a family
is this a family could do item is this something we already do as a family is
this in our no way pile as a family really interesting discussions
and this gets back to the habit of not talking about climate change by doing
the card deck you already have the conversation already set and finally
there's a website called Landtalk.org have people anybody here ever hear of
landtalk.org great it's a it's a website developed by a faculty member at
Stanford and one at Berkeley a biologist and an engineer and the premise behind
it is very simple trying to get people to upload interviews in which people
talk about their memory of places that they care about remember that first
question I asked you picture a place you care about landtalk.org gives you an
opportunity to record your climate memories of those places and the idea is
to get people to populate their website so that we we begin to have an archive
of places that people care about and what their climate concerns are about
them so this the premise behind Gray in Green is very simple our time is short
our time is short individually Laura Carstensen Psychologist at Stanford says
that somewhere in your early early to mid 50s your sense of time changes and
you begin to think about time left to live so for older adults that sense of
time urgency is actually something that we can leverage and use secondly the
climate crisis time is short if anything our models have been too conservative
climate change is happening it's real the Defense Department calls climate
change a strategic threat multiplier and if it's good enough for DOD it's good
enough for me so in the end older adults are a resource not only to be concerned
about as victims of climate change but also as potential leaders of climate
action so one of our themes is that their concern about future generations
can be leveraged to move them from anxiety to action to have it on climate
change so a healthy planet is your legacy it's my legacy it's our legacy
but it's time to pass it on so thank you for your attention and I'm open for
questions or comments the question is there are things we can do individually
but so much of our concern is caused by corporations or big organizations
what can we do to move them they worry about the bottom line so there are I
think there are two or three different strategies one is to apply the metrics
of business to the business of climate change there's a project called Risky
Business I don't know if you're familiar with that Risky Business was a project
is a project that was launched by a bipartisan group of business types Hank
Paulson former Secretary of the Treasury Michael Bloomberg
Tom Steyer so already you see it's got a range of political views all of them
coming from the business community and they did a very simple and smart thing
they said let's apply the business discipline of risk assessment and apply
that to climate change and it's impacts in two areas health impacts and economic
impacts by region of the US by region of the country they've put out a series and
they continue to put out a series of reports on the economic impact of
climate change by region both in terms of healthcare impact and economic impact
so one step is to use the resources already developed to make the business
case that responding to climate change makes good economic sense the other is
to use the power of investments or divestments for example a number of
universities are having conversations about divesting from fossil fuel or
unsustainable corporations and organizations so those are two of the
steps that you know you can use as an individual and of course the third is
to vote for individuals in the local regional state and federal offices who
acknowledge and understand that climate change is real is happening and we need
to respond to it Citizens Climate Lobby for example focuses on one issue carbon
tax but there are other issues there's now a bipartisan climate lobby that has
been developed in Washington one for one it has to have one Republican and one
Democrat as it expands so it's totally bipartisan so there's a growing
acknowledgement on The Hill but I think we have the power
as individual voters to say I'm going to vote that interest as well as the
economic interest your question about research and getting it out the other
thing I do in a workshop is if we were doing this in a workshop I'd also have
you sketch your answer it turns out that that's another way to get you deeply
engaged very quickly I developed this approach at the design school at
Stanford so it's a combination of psychology and human centered design it
turns out about two-thirds of our brain is wired to process either directly or
indirectly visual information but we lean heavily on the verbal right but by
sketching no matter how well you draw I quickly engage you now you asked a
question research funding operators are standing by now and viewers like you can
certainly contribute I have a couple of grants in my next prime what I'm working
on now is scaling this effort working with a couple of national organizations
who are very interested in taking the materials and the approach and
disseminating it through their large networks and we're trying to get
foundation and corporate funding to do that because I'm pretty I'm convinced
the approach gets people very quickly into the project and now I'm just
trying to scale the effort because me going around doing workshops doesn't
scale quickly enough how long have I been working on the project for about
three years I started with just a general idea I'm going to look at the
intersection of population aging and climate change and join the hundreds of
people who are doing that and once I talked to all six of them I decided that
gee okay but look here's the I'll just end with this it's climate change to me
is a lot like psychotherapy today what do I mean by that I'm a clinical
psychologist by training one of the things we know about psychotherapy is
that insight does not lead to behavior change you have to do more than just
having insight we have insight on climate the people right here in your
county three-fourths of them know climate change is real over half know
it's human caused and yet they're not changing the habit of
talking and moving on it so we have to it seems to me that yes we need ongoing
climate science I'm all for that but it seems to me the Behavioral Sciences
really need to step up and get engaged in moving people from anxiety to action
to habit and that's really important for psychologists and other behavioral
and social sciences to bring our expertise into this arena so again Dave
thanks for having me and thanks for your attention this afternoon
so today's the birthday of one of our faculty members who passed away way too young a
few years ago Nancy Ashton it's her birthday today I finally took
over her course on environmental psychology when I turned 60 and she was
gone and so many of the ways that I think about Environmental Psychology and
Sustainability is exactly what Mick just pointed out it's like our
interaction with our natural environment is not all that different from our models of
abnormal psychology where there's a mismatch between what our natural
environment needs and how we are behaving and you can actually take all
the different main great paradigms of the field of psychology and you can use
them to consider how to get people to change their behaviors with respect to
the natural environment Mick actually they finally came out with a new version
of the textbook for aging and mental health and it's just circumstance that
climate change was the last part of the last chapter we covered this week as the
book gets closed out Rachel is also an expert in terms of mental health and
mental illness we don't just use Mick's book in some of our classes but Rachel's
written a book entitled Surrounded By Madness about her family experience with
a mother with mental illness and an adoptive daughter and so they
both know an awful lot about the things that us in psychology are much more
familiar with mental health and mental illness and yet it it's their paradigms
that so much work with our understanding of the environment we in Psychology and
Gerontology wanted to thank Cheryl for her years as our Dean here at Stockton I
mentioned earlier that she was trained at Penn State in Human Development and
Family Studies under Mick and other colleagues at Penn State Dr Prochnow
was a fellow student of Cheryl's and Cheryl's been a really strong advocate
for all of our programs and Social and Behavioral Sciences but we're especially
grateful for her advocacy in Psych and Gerontology and for our Center on Aging
with her background in that field she's decided actually to retire very
soon before she came to us I guess after after Penn State she went directly to
SUNY Oswego one of the coldest places on the planet even though I know she likes
it warm you know that's one of those places where they have to have
underground tunnels to get between buildings or they put up ropes on the
path so that you don't get blown into the lake from the heavy the heavy winds
there but between Penn State and here at Stockton her time at Oswego she
I think she's quite proud of developing a program there at Oswego in Family and
Human Development and Family Studies you know taking after her mentors at Penn
State so on behalf of all of our colleagues in Psych and Gero thank you to
Cheryl for your hard work on our behalf she's she won't even come to the front
of the room so I'm not going to try hey Mick do you have something you want to
share with Cheryl I think he does we actually have a couple gifts for you
Cherly you mind coming up and dr. Gata Shelder are you somewheres nearby
I'm right here there you are
I'm great Cheryl I have a gift for you that I think I'm unique in the audience
and being able to give you I have a bound copy of your dissertation
I'm cleaning out my house yeah so am I congratulations
I'm Christine Gata Shelder current coordinator of the Gerontology Minor and
all of the faculty and the Gerontology Minor would like to give you a little
goodie so you can go shopping I've had the honor of getting to know Dean Kaus
over the years as an adjunct faculty member a visiting assistant professor of
psychology and then tenure track and I'd like to let everyone know something that
you may not know that in the spirit of lifespan development Dean Kaus to me and
many others has been a great mentor she has nurtured many of us to be where we
are today across the lifespan so for me I was the little adjunct that could
twelve years being an adjunct she nurtured and supported me being a full-time faculty
member for which I am very very grateful so from the Gerontology Minor faculty we
will miss you
so thank you all for coming and could you please give our
speakers another round of applause
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