The Problem

On May 8, 2024, The Guardian’s environment editor, Damian Carrington, wrote about the responses of 380 top climate scientists to the question of how they feel about the future. Overwhelmingly, these scientists, Carrington wrote, “are terrorized but determined to continue fighting.” The main emotions those experts were expressing were anger, fear, and frustration. Some expressed anxiety and depression. In this article, I hope to explain why staying in these emotions actually makes our climate problems worse, and how to reverse that.

I understand fully. I have been there. Believe me, as a Highly Sensitive Person, I am still often prey to those painful emotions not wanting to leave my body. And like all emotions, they are natural and helpful. We must know how to deal with them, however. And that requires an advanced, complex ability called “emotional intelligence,” that many climate scientists (and most people) may not have developed yet, but that Highly Sensitive Persons are forced to acquire as soon as possible in life, to not live constantly in pain and misery.

The scientists’ emotions in the quoted article were all related to the problem (so, not to the solution). That means that, in the moment of the uncomfortable feelings, and for as long as we are holding on to them, we are thinking about the problem; we are telling ourselves a story of danger, pain, and suffering. Let me insist. We are having those feelings because we are telling ourselves these stories, regardless of whether the stories are correct or not. Our emotions stem from what we tell ourselves about a situation, not directly from that situation. And more often than not, the “situation” does not exist in the moment, it’s a past event or a possible future scenario (among other possibilities). “Fighting” may be a good response option, but only when we have no better option against a real enemy in the moment. But as regards our climate story, what or whom exactly do we need to fight, and for how long? We humans often mistake who the enemy is, or think there’s an enemy when there is none.

The main mistake that many climate experts make is to persist in the painful worst case scenario emotions, with their associated negative stories. Because these emotions can only fuel their bodies to impulsively make the same moves that bring more of the same exact problem. These scientists will, for example, keep insisting to show up in the same WRONG places, to convince the same WRONG people, about the same scientific information, delivered in the WRONG way. This will only increase their frustration and anxiety, and further antagonize these audiences.

The energy of the problem fuels (more of) the problem.

The Solution

First, let me clarify that I do believe that humanity has a global climate problem. I think that we are not addressing this problem correctly, however, despite a few endeavors in the right direction. We are still making it worse, overall. Now, back to how managing our emotions can help.

We must first accept the energy of the problem: our uncomfortable emotions, as such. We must feel them. And we must express the story we are telling ourselves in that moment. And be as scientific and analytical about our thoughts and feelings as we can. It’s the only way we can know and characterize the problem with sufficient accuracy. Maybe, for those top scientists, the story tells the worst case scenario for the future of humanity in a devastated world. Or perhaps something like: “I will never be understood!” (I wish they’d hear that one so they would start changing their communication strategy!) Whatever the story, it expresses something scientists do NOT want, something they thus need to trade for its opposite.

So, as soon as possible after having felt and understood the painful emotion, expressed the associated story, and defined the problem objectively, we must find a way, using our willpower, to imagine the world we want instead, that is, the world as it will be once solutions have been applied successfully (even though we may not know the means to get there yet). We must hold such a bright image (vision) of the future world (at least one happy scene of it) in our mind in the present. Those new, positive thoughts will immediately change how we feel, thus now providing the right kind of emotional fuel to move the body in the right direction, towards our ideal.

Being “in the energy of the solution” means that we have operated the mindset shift I just described, so that we can work on finetuning the details of a solution and act accordingly. The means to get “somewhere” emerge from dreaming of that “somewhere” first. And a collective world experience only happens if there is a collective dream.

On May 9, 2024, Christiana Figueres, former head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2010–2016), shared her opinion in The Guardian about the same article quoted above. She advocated for “stubborn optimism” as possibly being “our only hope.” I agree. She exhorted:

“While we grapple with the current lack of political will, and the abhorrent inequities of the climate crisis, we can take some comfort that so many of those who are key to designing our future have heard climate scientists’ urgent warnings and are channeling their spirit by taking positive action in response: think of the engineers reforming our grids, the architects, the social entrepreneurs, the regenerative farmers restoring our soil, the legal advocates, and the millions of people everywhere who are advancing new systems of care, repair and regeneration.”

What It Will Take

Christiana Figueres is correct: despite all that is not going well, we must absolutely spend more time thinking of what is going well.

Shifting to positive emotions collectively to fuel humanity’s transformation has started but will probably take more time. Because most sustainability experts are still dominantly concerned by natural sciences that speak of things external to the human body — the “environment” — and forget to look inside their own bodies, consider their own biology, observe how their inner nature (including their emotions) interacts with and impacts their external one, and integrate the two in one only system.

But this relationship exists, and it is 100% physical. What happens in the psyche is energy, literally “power.” There is a physical chain reaction between what we think and feel, and what happens in our experience of the world as a result. And if enough of us collectively think and feel dominantly in a positive way about the world we want, and act intelligently (calmly and strategically) by tuning our thoughts and feelings (our emotions) to the right frequency, we can change the world for the better with little effort. The United Nations has a crucial role to play in that regard, since it gathers representatives of most countries. But right now we still (involuntarily) trying to accelerate while applying the breaks at the same time, and failing.

The Metaphor of the Domino Effect

Let me put it this way: Imagine you watch a five-minute video of one of these big domino fall-down projects, with tens of thousands of dominos forming the most complex ensembles. It starts with one domino being given a gentle push, just enough for the domino to fall… on another. Then we see amazing chain reactions, with big constructions crumbling down, balls jumping to knock doors open, art pieces changing colors or revealing a different pattern, etc.

Would your experience be the same if you saw only the last one second of the video, or only the last two or three dominos (missing most of the show)?

Probably not. In a similar way, let’s say you witness repeated adverse climate events (floods, hurricanes, periods of extremely high temperatures). We say adverse because they have negative consequences for you. You can see how this pattern of adverse events is a cause of something bad (for you). But can you also see how it is also a consequence of something that happened just before? And then another before that?

You think, “I need to do something about that.” So, you ask yourself what produced that effect. Well, just keep asking that question backwards. If you trace back far enough, you’ll find that some information was communicated to enough people, who believed it, and who started behaving in a way to (unknowingly) release all these tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Don’t stop there. Tracing further back, you will find that enough people were thinking and feeling in a certain way that led to these messages, beliefs, and behaviors, and on to those adverse climate events, and to natural disasters killing people (the impact).

Why I Know it Works

You can find the actual science in neuroscience, behavioral sciences, and the science of consciousness. We know today that we “hallucinate” our experience of the world with our mind. I particularly recommend professor Anil Seth’s work and books on human consciousness, in that regard.

As to me, as a pioneering thinker, feeler, and doer in sustainability for close to 45 years, I have made many mistakes, like all pioneers do, in the unavoidable initial trial and error phase. Eventually, as a leader of global sustainable development programs in the area of “nature and business,” my teams, partners, and I managed to measurably change entire industries worldwide for the better, particularly in the food, agriculture, tourism, and finance sectors. I came to understand a thing or two about what works and what does not, as regards large scale change programs. Particularly, I saw that what was said, how, to whom, and when, and how others answered, and how the conversation continued — in one word, communication — was a key domino in the chain to a program’s success. Good communication starts with stellar project formulation — one that all can understand and implement, just like a builder needs a perfect design. I also saw how emotions (thought + feeling events) affect communication, and everything else the body does. Emotion is an even earlier domino in the chain to impact. And only the “energy of the solution” (positive emotion) can help reach intended goals, thus resolve problems.

More on Emotions

Emotions such as fear and anger create tension in our bodies, and the immediate desire to resolve that tension. We are then very tempted to make hasty decisions, which often lead us to the opposite of what we truly need. It can in fact be quite detrimental to stay for too long in those lower emotional states, and their inherent negative thoughts and stories.

Our senses and emotions move the body moment after moment, to help us survive and grow. We feel naturally unhappy (frustrated) when one of our needs is not fulfilled, or its fulfillment is threatened, and we are wired to seek its fulfillment. With experience, we are able to devise more efficient strategies to do so (emotional intelligence).

With experience, we also become more conscious. We uncover and integrate more and more components and aspects of reality into our memory and consciousness. It is like working on a big puzzle, one piece at a time. We discover that many things can be invisible (to the eye) but do exist concretely and physically. Gradually, we come to sense subtler things and phenomena, like feelings. We learn that these are also concrete and physical. That they are objects among other objects in universe; effect-producing, and effect-receiving, measurable energy signals and fields.

When trying to make sense of the world, we cannot but create models in our minds of what we perceive and sense. We use words and numbers, naming the parts, labelling the dominos in a big system. Each and every puzzle piece, each and every domino, has a location in our universal real estate (the system as it is thought of in our mind). All are parts of the system. All interact. All are concrete and physical. All communicate with each other. All matter. One day we realize that words and numbers (spelled with signs, or uttered as sounds) are physical objects too, inhabiting one or more parts of our brain. Like dominos falling, they influence the entirety — repeat entirety — of our experience of the world, including our own actions and the actions of others, for better or for worse, physically.

So yes, our emotions have everything to do with our world, and can change it, whether we like it or not. Better be for what’s life enhancing. We must only make sure that our thoughts for the better win over our thoughts for the worse. And stay focused.

Dear reader, what stories in our collective mind do you think are influencing the current world events?

And if you want your organization (all the people in it) to start thinking collectively in the right direction, book me here for a group Socratic conversation: a highly interactive speaking gig, where we get to practice using only the words that can create the reality we want.

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