Rosemary Randall

Over the summer I interviewed a number of people about their experiences of discovering ‘ecological debt’. The term is a useful shorthand for describing the unequal relationship between the ‘developed’ nations whose lifestyles use far more than a fair share of the world’s resources, and the countries, habitats and eco-systems that are devastated as a result. I also collected stories on the website What’s Your Pip Story? (If you want to add a story, please do.)

The complex systems that deliver us a t-shirt or a new tv obscure our indebted relationship to the biosphere. It’s not easy to connect a Saturday shopping trip or a longed-for holiday with ecological disaster. It’s a minority of people who are aware of the facts or who allow them more than a fleeting place in their mind.

I was curious about the psychological process people might go through first in letting such awareness in and then in managing to live with it. The resulting paper was presented last weekend (October 16h/17th) at a conference called Engaging with Climate Change, organised by the Institute of Psychoanalysis. « Read the rest of this entry »