A recent appearance on the Dutch talk show Buitenhof by University of Groningen associate professor of Arctic ecology Maarten van Loonen ended in tears.
Van Loonen, who has been travelling to Svalbard in Norway for decades to study migratory birds, was on the show to talk about how climate change has altered the landscape of the arctic archipelago. “Once you’ve been there and seen if for yourself, then you know that we have to do something.”
The presenter asked Van Loonen if he feels hopeless, and Van Loonen replied, “I feel helpless. At least if I can talk about it, then I feel a little bit better about it, but that sense of powerlessness is very present.” You can view the full interview (in Dutch) below:
A recent study published in PLOS Climate found that researchers across academic fields at universities in the United Kingdom feel disempowered and too overworked to take action to limit the severity of climate change. But do our researchers even feel like they are able to take action or openly express concern about climate change without risking undermining their own academic legitimacy?
Prompted by Van Loonen’s moving talk show appearance, we had an open discussion during a recent weekly lab meeting about the perceived tension between doing our jobs as researchers and our own feelings as private citizens about preventing climate change.
No right answer
The researchers brought up the fact that when they do media appearances, they are invariably asked what they are doing in their personal lives to behave more pro-environmentally. The question seems to have no right answer.
If a researcher says what they do personally, they worry that it could undermine their future research because study participants may say they do those things too, because they feel it’s what the scientist wants to hear and therefore skew the research findings.
There is a difference between suppressing your own feelings altogether, being honest about your feelings in certain settings, and speaking about those feelings in the media. Reluctance among climate researchers in particular to speak in a personal capacity rather than professional is perhaps even more common now than in the past, in light of increased online attacks questioning the reliability of climate science as a tactic to delay climate action, as covered by The New York Times this week.
Hopeless, or hopeful
But the researchers present at the lab meeting expressed a range of views on the question of whether they are allowed (or allow themselves) to experience climate feelings. Some a sense of hopelessness and an instinct to detach from their own emotions as a form of self-preservation, but readily pointed out that the work they do here feels important and meaningful.
Several researchers said that their sense of urgency about climate change makes them feel compelled to communicate the research being done by our group as widely and as quickly as possible.
The role of activism and acknowledgement of the place for eco-emotions is something that the instructors in the group say they recognize in the students in their classes as well. Our master’s programme does not teach students to become activists of course, but rather to understand what encourages and enables people to act.
Similar to the sense of meaning that the researchers say they derive from their work, the instructors also said they see that the environmental psychology research being done often gives people, including students, a sense of hope, which can in turn be a source of motivation.
Credibility
Scientific soundness and credibility have been defined over hundreds of years of academic research, with traditions originating in western nations being upheld as the universal standard of what is valid and rigorous science. But the core purpose of science is to continually question, build on and better understand existing knowledge, and that sense of self-scrutiny is necessarily applicable to science itself.
By re-examining the conventional assumptions of the role of the scientist and what aspects of their existence lend them credibility, scientific research will only become better through honest acknowledgement that scientists are also human beings with lived experience and feelings (even if they do not share them in a public forum).
Recognizing your own beliefs, values and biases, and acknowledging them honestly to yourself is a crucial lesson for future researchers to see and potentially correct for their own blind spots, and intentionally address those counterpoints in their work. Rather than being a liability or discrediting, it should be possible for the scientific community (and society at large) to reframe the personal, emotional side of a scientist as a potential asset.
