Feeling our way to change: Emotional Pathways through the Climate Emergency with Dr. Debra Davidson

Our emotionality features prominently in our navigation of the mounting impacts of climate change, and in our collective attempts to avert further climate catastrophe. Better understanding of our emotionality and its role in individual behavior, collective action, and ultimately in social change can offer important insights to inform our personal and collective responses to the climate emergency. In this talk, we will take a deep dive into emotionality, to see if we can get a better handle on just what those pathways from emotions to social change look like, and how an emotionality lens can be applied to a critical, constructive analysis of our prospects for confronting the climate emergency in manners that minimize the damage, and perhaps even enhance our prospects for meaningful collective living.

Dr. Debra Davidson is Professor of Environmental Sociology in the Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology at the University of Alberta. Debra began her career at the University of Alberta as Assistant Professor in 1999. Since that time, her teaching and research has been focused on the social impacts of and responses to climate change, with particular attention to energy-society relations. Her work is featured in several books and journals, including Science, Nature, Global Environmental Change, and British Journal of Sociology. She was Lead Author in Working Group II on the 5^th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, and is currently a member of the United Nations Environment Program’s Expert Foresight Panel. Between 2013 and 2023, she also served as Director of Prairie Urban Farm, a community farm located at the University of Alberta, and she is also Convenor of the Climate Action Coalition at the University of Alberta.