Welcome to We Can Fix It, where we tackle the climate crisis with facts, feelings, and action. Written by me, climate scientist Kim Nicholas.

Hi friends,

Greetings from the train to Paris! I have work there next week, and on the way, Simon and I are taking advantage of the Swedish holiday weekend to see where my parents lived in Heidelberg when they were first married, and try their all-time favorite restaurant (no pressure!!).

This month, we’ll look at ways to grow better through struggling with crisis; and I’ll ask you to send me your burning climate questions by voice note, so I can answer them on my new podcast!

Action: Send Me Your Climate Dilemma(& you might end up on my new podcast!)

This month, your high-impact climate action is to send me a voice note. 💚

Specifically, a voice note asking for advice on a climate dilemma you’re facing. I’ll try my best to answer your question on a new podcast I’m working on.

The first podcast season will focus on the highest-impact actions within your Five Climate Superpowers:

1. Citizen: Elect climate champions

Fed up with climate laggards in office in your town/region/country? Or have a success story to share about getting a climate champion elected?

2. Professional: Cut workplace emissions in half by 2030

Does your workplace have climate goals in line with science? More importantly, are they following them? How would you even know what’s legit??

3. Investor: Switch to a fossil-free bank

Have you managed to move your money out of the big bad banks? Or have inertia, bureaucracy, and logistics gotten in the way?

4. Consumer: Let go of frequent flying

People find this one of the hardest actions. Where are you at with flying less (or going flight-free)? Ready to try to get started? Or were you surprised by anything when you skipped a flight?

5. Role model: Build a strong climate community

Are you feeling alone in the climate crisis, or do you have a strong, fun group of Climate People around you? Have questions on finding your peeps, or tips on what worked?

In your voice memo about one of the above areas, please let me know:

Where are you eager to take climate action but feel stuck? Tell me why.

Where have you tried to take climate action and ran into roadblocks? What happened?

What climate action success stories can you share to help others?

Share your question with me by clicking here:

Thanks so much for sharing, I’m excited to hear from you!!

Facts + Feelings: Better after Crisis?

What if things could be better on the other side of major crisis? Not just “bouncing back” to the same old baseline, but “bouncing forward” to a new and more meaningful way of being?

This is the idea of posttraumatic growth. It’s been around psychology for decades, and I think it offers important lessons in the climate crisis.

Growth can result from “the potentially transformative power of suffering” if:

A major crisis breaks your core beliefs.

In response, you can ruminate, cope, or struggle.

Through struggle, especially with support, you can achieve positive transformation.

Posttraumatic growth can help you function better than you did before, with more focus on what really matters.

It starts with crisis

The process of posttraumatic growth involves a “seismic event,” a crisis big enough to disrupt core beliefs and “shatter the individual’s understanding of the world and [their] place in it,” as psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun wrote.

Core beliefs help us understand the way the world works, guide our decisions, and provide meaning and purpose. Cracking them is deeply distressing.

Response to crisis

From this shattered foundation, there are three options:

Anxious, repetitive thoughts: a natural response to the crisis, but can be paralyzing and lead to a decline in function (the opposite of growth).

Coping: using strategies to “bounce back” to the previous baseline. This is sometimes called resilience. It implies recovery, but no growth.

Struggle, which can lead to posttraumatic growth.

Note that growth is not inevitable, but it is possible in response to crisis. Tedeschi and Calhoun speculate perhaps people with the highest coping capacity might experience little growth, because they don’t struggle enough!

A crisis that shatters core beliefs can cause struggle, which with support, can lead to posttraumatic growth. Figure: drawn by me on a train! Refs: Tedeschi + Calhoun 1996; 2004; Tedeschi, 2020Paths to support growth

More recently, Tedeschi wrote in Harvard Business Review about five ways leaders can help others achieve growth following crisis. Slightly reworded, they are:

Learn: face the truth of the trauma and rethink identity, worldviews, and future plans.

Share: make sense of the trauma by talking about what’s happened, its effects, and your struggles and concerns.

Service: “people do better in the aftermath of trauma if they find work that benefits others”.

Regulate emotions: tolerate uncertainty, observe and acknowledge difficult emotions, and use practices like movement and mindfulness to increase agency.

Create narrative: Develop an authentic story that lets you accept the trauma, see new priorities and possibilities, and meaningfully craft future chapters.

Dimensions of posttraumatic growth

As you struggle, and especially if you have the supports above, you might experience the benefits of posttraumatic growth:

Personal strength: self reliance, ability to handle difficulties, acceptance, “I’m stronger than I thought.”

New possibilities: new opportunities, interests, and life paths; “I can do better things with my life,” “I can make a change.”

Improved relationships: closer to others, more able to count on and accept needing others; more compassion; prioritizing relationships; express emotions, “I learned a great deal about how wonderful people are.”

Appreciation: for the value of life and each day, and prioritizing what’s really important, thanks to noticing what might have been taken for granted before.

Spiritual growth: better understanding of and engagement with existential matters or faith from reflecting on life’s big questions of values and ethics.

In sum— there’s the possibility that our struggles in the climate crisis can lead us to positive transformation. Hang in there, friends!

P.S. Don’t forget to please ask your climate questions and….

Send Kim a voice note here!

Parting Tidbits Recent news

I spoke to NPR about high-impact climate actions, as part of a Short Wave episode on the Climate-Kid Question:

Book Recommendation

Blue Skies, by TC Boyle. Painfully dark and painfully funny climate fiction about the clueless Americans ignoring nature, each other, and their own agency as climate disasters become their daily life, and the shrill, myopic, and ineffective scientists who try to stop them.

xo,
Kim

This post is free to make climate action accessible to everyone. Please subscribe to receive new posts. If you find my work valuable and are financially able, I am grateful for any support you can give as a paid subscriber. 💚