CUSA 2012 Sustainability Seminar Series

Global climate change is a human problem, both in terms of its causes and consequences. A closer look at the human scale of climate change can involve examining the potential savings of various approaches, differences and commonalities in climate change beliefs, and responses to messaging and information. This seminar features behavioral scientists discussing these issues and highlighting the importance of approaching climate change at the human scale.

n the United States, there is no unifying federal law establishing sustainability as an organizing principle in our environmental, social and economic relations. Rather, at present, sustainability makes its way into our legal frameworks outside of the federal legislative process. After touching on innovative municipal and state initiatives, this lecture highlights the unexpected force that indigenous communities and peoples' organizations play, both here and abroad, in driving legal developments in sustainability.

The intention of my art is to express a story that generates thought, discussion and action in our community- a story that can catalyze the change that we so desperately hunger for. I like to think about renaissance art. Art that was respected. Art that was so forward looking that it truly gave a voice to progress. In the past art has led us into a new era of human development, thought, science and democracy. We are now at that point again, at a point where the arts have the potential to lead us into new ways of thinking about and caring for our world. Our world is unsustainable, from our work lives, to our education systems, to how we treat the environment and how we treat one another. In expressing sustainability in our world today I would like to take a moment to think about how art can be a movement and how a movement can create a sustainable future.

There is growing consensus that environmental, social, and economic sustainability are not possible given current trends and that understanding human interactions with the environment is a key aspect of ameliorating many of these issues. Psychology, as the science of human behavior, is in a prime position to assist with this task. Human interactions with sustainability include human drivers of un-sustainability (e.g. over-use of limited resources), human consequences of instability (e.g. natural and technological disasters), and human responses to a changing environment (e.g. mitigation and adaptation). Although progress is being made in the natural and physical sciences towards technological solutions and in political circles towards more sustainable policies, an understanding of individuals is vital for these new technologies to be adopted and policies supported. This talk will include a discussion of current and pressing issues in the psychology of sustainability and share recent insights in areas such as social norms, risk perception, message framing, and positive psychology that highlight some of the ways that psychology is contributing to these issues.