Ep 10: Transformational Resilience and Climate Change with Bob Doppelt
Climate, Mind and Behavior Podcast: Episode Ten
By Eleanor BennettWelcome to episode ten of the Climate, Mind and Behavior Podcast. Each episode, we’ll explore groundbreaking intersections between climate change, resilience, contemplative practice, and human behavior.
Bob Doppelt is Executive Director of The Resource Innovation Group (TRIG), a non-partisan social science-based sustainability and global climate change organization. In addition, Doppelt is a professor at the University of Oregon where he teaches systems thinking and climate policy. He has advanced training in counseling psychology, environmental land management and has been practicing socially engaged Buddhism for twenty-five years. Throughout his career he has strived to integrate these three fields of inquiry.
Doppelt believes climate change as well as many of today’s pressing social and economic problems result from outdated and flawed assumptions about the way the world works and what it means to live a decent and honorable life. According to Doppelt, climate disruption is not, at its core, an environmental, energy, or technological problem, but the greatest crises of thought and imagination in human history.
Doppelt called me from his home in Oregon to talk about these ideas and his newest book Transformational Resilience: How Building Human Resilience to Climate Disruption Can Safeguard Society and Increase Wellbeing. The book uses neuroscience-based mental health and mindfulness research to help readers cope with and use climate-related adversities to learn, grow, and enhance personal, collective, and environmental wellbeing.
To learn more about Bob Doppelt’s recent book and his work with TRIG, visit TheResourceInnovationGroup.org. And click here to watch a video of his presentation at Garrison’s 2013 Climate, Cities and Behavior conference. Our theme music is composed by Zoë Keating. You can find her music on iTunes or on her website, Zoë Keating.com. The photograph for this episode is by Chris Ensey.