Does the future plight of the planet keep you up at night? Are you filled with a sense of doom regarding your future or the uncertain future of your children? You’re not alone. Young people are particularly susceptible to this mental anguish and Greta Thunberg, was one of the first of her generation to speak publicly of her eco-depression.

Canadian journalist Arno Kopecky and Professor Theresa Marteau, Director of the Behavior and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge, discuss some of the options we have available to us in responding to this huge global challenge, and they address the pessimism and hope attached to the outcome of the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow.

Arno Kopecky, author of the The Environmentalist’s Dilemma: A Promise and Peril in an Age of Climate Crisis, asks if hope is naïve or indispensable. Marteau examines what is necessary in terms of our individual and collective behavior that will make change possible. Her recent paper in the British Medical Journal suggests ways we might reach net zero by 2050.

Speakers

Arno Kopecky

Arno Kopecky is a Canadian journalist and travel writer. His book The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway won the 2014 Edna Staebler Award, and was shortlisted for the 2014 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and the Governor General’s Award for English-language non-fiction at the 2014 Governor General’s Awards. In addition to his books, Kopecky has also been published in newspapers and magazines including The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Reader’s Digest, Maclean’s, The Tyee and Foreign Policy. He lives in Squamish, British Columbia.

Theresa Marteau

Theresa Marteau is Director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the development and evaluation of interventions to change behaviour (principally food, tobacco and alcohol consumption) to improve population health and reduce health inequalities, with a particular focus on targeting non-conscious processes. Other research interests include (a) risk perception and communication particular of biomarker-derived risks, and their weak links with behaviour change, and (b) acceptability to publics and policy makers of government intervention to change behaviour. She co-chairs The Lancet-Chatham House Commission on improving population health post COVID-19, focusing on identifying key actions for equitable and sustainable improvements in health https://www.healthpostcovid-19.org/ She currently participates in the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), responding to Covid-19, and in particular, two SAGE subgroups: the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) and the Environmental Modelling Group (EMG).