The Psychology Society of Ireland (PSI) has just celebrated 5000 members, and a Special Interest Group (SIG) has been formed for Addressing the Climate and Environmental Emergency. As interest in this topic is growing within PSI and beyond, the SIG hosted a Climate Café Workshop to create a hub for climate conversations at the 2024 PSI Annual Conference.
Climate cafés have become a powerful strategy to promote dialogue around the climate crisis, in particular the free expression of all the emotions we feel. Typically Climate Cafes are focused on an internal space of emotional reflection, drawing on their roots in death cafes.
In this instance, given the opportunity to talk to so many psychologists in a room, we extended the workshop to discuss emotions PLUS actions. We, therefore, divided the conversation into two parts: 1) discussing our emotions and 2) discussing what we could do as psychologists to foster collective efficacy and nurture positive climate agency.
The event was well attended and allowed us to outline the principles of the SIG and raise awareness of the topic of environmental/climate psychology. It provided a comfortable space to share thoughts and emotions relating to the Climate and Environmental Emergencies in a facilitated way. We fostered connections and relationships and it created a sense of strength and community. We look forward to the cross-fertilisation of ideas and collaborations for future actions or events building on this event.
Gathering psychologists to talk more directly about the environment and climate emergencies at events like these is something we plan as a SIG to do more and more in 2025 and beyond. For Repsychable, it was important to be part of the organising committee and to play a part in raising its profile in psychology. Being able to facilitate these key conversations within the field of psychology creates momentum for future collective action.
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