Speaking of Psychology: How to empower older adults to take action on climate change, with Michael Smyer, PhD

Climate change will have significant psychological effects on many people, including older adults, according to a report published by the American Psychological Association and ecoAmerica. In this episode, Michael Smyer, PhD, talks about how to get older adults to move from anxiety to action in reducing the effects of climate change.

Michael Smyer, PhD, is a professor of psychology at Bucknell University. A national expert, Smyer has written and lectured extensively on aging. He has also consulted with Fortune 500 companies, state and national legislative leaders and higher education organizations on the impacts of aging.

Smyer leads the Graying Green project, which brings together climate communicators, scientists, and community and business leaders to make older people more visible, valued and effective on climate action.

Audrey Hamilton: Hello, and welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a podcast produced by the American Psychological Association. I’m your host, Audrey Hamilton. In this episode, I talk with a psychologist about why climate change scientists, communicators and policymakers should be looking at older adults as an untapped resource for “green thinking.”

Mick Smyer: A lot of the research has overlooked older people in the climate discussion. I find I’m either an aging whisperer to climate groups or a climate whisperer to aging groups because both groups are like ships passing in the night. They’re not talking to each other.

Audrey Hamilton: In fact, psychology research has shown that older adults are primed to think about their own legacies and future generations. And while older adults also more likely to vote and have time to act on climate change-related issues, they are usually left feeling anxious, invisible and undervalued.

Mick Smyer, professor of psychology at Bucknell University, has leveraged his work in gerontology, the study of aging, into developing and evaluating effective climate action strategies for an aging world. His graying green project works with climate communicators, climate scientists and community and business leaders to make older adults more visible, valued and effective in climate action strategies. Welcome, Dr. Smyer.

Mick Smyer: Thanks for having me.

Audrey Hamilton: I think there's an assumption out there that younger people are more concerned about the negative repercussions of climate change -- you know yet a recent survey done at Yale said that 45 percent of baby boomers are alarmed or concerned about climate change compared with just 35 percent of millennials, just as one example. Does this surprise you or you know, why are why not?

Mick Smyer: Well that's a good question Audrey. It does not surprise me but I'm biased. I'm a gerontologist. I've been studying aging my whole career, so I know that older adults are thinking about the future even if they're not going to be part of that future. Even if their own time is -- is shorter than the future they can envision.

I also know that developmentally, older adults are primed to think about next generations in their own family. So, for those reasons, I'm not surprised that older adults are concerned about climate change in climate action in general.

And then when you get to very specific actions in their local or regional communities or that affect them or their families, I'm not surprised that their concern is even higher.

Audrey Hamilton: The number of people aged 60 and older has doubled since 1980. The number of people aged 80 years and older will almost quadruple to 395 million between now and 2050. You have said that older populations are largely ignored resource for climate change efforts. What does the research say about older adults and the likelihood that they would become interested in environmentalism?

Mick Smyer: Well, it's interesting. A lot of the research has overlooked older people in the climate discussion. I find that I'm either an aging whisperer to climate groups or a climate whisperer to aging groups because both groups are sort of like ships passing in the night -- they're not talking to each other so when I first started the grey and green project I talked to climate scientists and I talked about the intersection of population aging and climate change -- two global patterns and I'd get a one-word answer and that word was “huh.” And the first time I got that word I was a little worried but then I realized that “huh” is science talk for “that's not a crazy idea -- I just never thought of it.”

And so, we'd go on and talk and then the climate scientist would become intrigued by what are we missing here and I think what they're missing is that a lot of the lessons that they've developed for other age groups also apply to older people. The basic lesson that comes from the National Academy of Sciences, for example, is when it comes to climate communication keep it short, social and positive.

Here's what that means. Short, in terms of timeframe -- we're not wired to think about our carbon footprint 10,000 years from now. In fact, we can think maybe three or four generations out so short timeframe really matters.

Audrey Hamilton: Social -- we're more likely to engage older people if we can link the climate issue to people and places that they care about that they have a social connection to and positive -- it's really important not to leave people totally overwhelmed with anxiety by how big the climate issue is, but it's important to point out the realities and also to point out what can we do about it -- what are some positive steps that individuals and communities can take?

Mick Smyer: So, as you mentioned, you're the founder of the Gray Green Project. Could you tell me a bit more about the goals of that project and what you're doing to achieve those goals?

Sure. Gray Green is really designed to try to move older people from anxiety to action to habit on climate change and we're doing that by engaging both climate scientists and climate communicators in this work -- and also developing some specific approaches and testing them out.

I spent the last year or so at the design school at Stanford University really trying to take design thinking and design concepts and applying it to the civic engagement issue and in that process, I spent a lot of time talking with older people about their concerns and about their feeling that they're invisible, undervalued and ineffective on climate issues.

And then working with them to figure out well how can we change that. How can we move them from that anxiety about climate to action and then habit on climate change?

And we now have a set of approaches that work and now our next step is how do we scale that from working with individuals or small groups to larger groups and communities?

Audrey Hamilton: So, what are some examples of the approaches that you're looking at?

Mick Smyer: Well let me ask you four questions, Audrey. Very simple questions. No podcast host will be harmed in the making of this recording. Picture a place, any place in the world that has a special meaning to you that you're really attached to. You have that place in mind?

Audrey Hamilton: Yeah.

Mick Smyer: Okay. Picture that place affected by extreme weather or climate change. Can you picture that threat?

Audrey Hamilton: Yes.

Mick Smyer: Okay, now picture what you'd like that place to look like forty to fifty years from now. Not what you think it will look like, but what you'd like it to look like.

Audrey Hamilton: Okay.

Mick Smyer: You have that picture in mind?

And fourth and final question for the bonus round -- picture something you can do today to work towards that vision that you have for 40 to 50 years from now.

Audrey Hamilton: Okay.

Mick Smyer: Yeah, a little bit okay. Yeah exactly, so longer but gives you thinking right?

Exactly. So, this is the first step of a three-step process that we've developed. Those four questions I've done with hundreds of people now. Everybody can do the first three. Regardless of political stripe, regardless of viewpoints on a variety of other issues, everybody has a place in the world they care about and everybody knows what the threat is to that place. And by the way, I've just made it personal for you and in 40 to 50-year time frame I've made it short for you -- so you're thinking back to the National Academy of Sciences and you're already thinking sorts short and social, but now the fourth question is the stumper. What can you do to work towards that vision?

And I would say 85 to 90 percent of people are stumped with that question. They don't know what to do.

Audrey Hamilton: Yeah.

Mick Smyer: Now, as a clinical psychologist, if I just left you anxious it's pretty good for business but it's not very good for climate action. And that's where the second step comes in.

We've developed a set of procedures -- a card sorting task, which is kind of fun that helps people figure out first what are they already doing on climate and second what's their next step on their own climate journey.

And when we work when we work that through with people, when we take them through that card sorting task, we find a couple of things happen. They really enjoy doing it and as one 73-year old said to me recently, “I was delighted to see how much I'm already doing but I was even more delighted to figure out what my next step was.”

And then the third part of our process is what we call a climate commitment. It's a psychology behavioral economics straight engagement contract where we get people to say, okay, here's my next step. So, who am I going to share that goal with and when am I going to do it? What's the timeframe? And then the last part, which is kind of fun as we ask people the picture a person or an organization whose values, visions and goals -- they do not agree with. They disagree with. And they make a commitment of a certain dollar amount that they will pledge to that person or organization if they don't carry through on the goal that they've just set.

And usually when I ask them to identify an organization or person they don't agree with there's nervous laughter in the room. I'll give you one quick example, then I'll stop.

I was doing this exercise at a retirement community in State College, Pennsylvania, which football fans would know is the home of Penn State and when we got to the climate commitment part, I asked people to identify an organization or individual whose goals they didn't agree with and somebody wrote down Ohio State University. So now, from the outside I could not have predicted that Ohio State would be a motivator for an older adult on climate change, but that person has told me what will motivate them and it turns out that this combination of the first four questions I asked you -- the card sort in the climate contract -- it's very effective in moving people from anxiety to action to have it on climate change.

Audrey Hamilton: Finally, I want to talk about something that isn't often brought up in conversations about climate change and this is the physical and mental consequences of climate change. Earlier this year the APA I should report with eco America -- outlining the potential impact of change on mental health. Are older adults more vulnerable to these changes? Is that something that you've looked at and studied?

Mick Smyer: Well that's a very good point, Audrey. Older adults are more vulnerable to a variety of effects of both physical and mental health effects of climate change. In fact, there have been a number of studies, including the most recent study by eco America and American Psychological Association that highlight these special vulnerabilities of older adults.

The way that I think about this is following the lead of the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense says that climate change is a threat multiplier -- a strategic threat multiplier. And I think when you look at older people they are particularly vulnerable because they are more likely to have chronic health conditions. Although the rates of mental illness are lower in later life than in other parts of the of the lifespan, when they occur they're likely to be as difficult to a challenge to respond to as at other parts of the lifespan.

So older adults are vulnerable in many of the same ways and have some additional physical vulnerabilities like a lessen the ability to deal with heat stress, for example, and thermoregulation in a heatwave and that sort of thing.

What Gray and Green is trying to do, however, is to say yes, the threats are real and older adults are vulnerable, but older adults are not only victims of climate change but potential leaders of climate action. So, both are true. The one thing I would point out is that the recent report by eco America and APA, which Susan Clayton and Kristy Manning chaired from the APA, continues APA's work in this area.

Janet Swim and her colleagues published an earlier report and one of the key themes there is building resilience both at the individual and community level. And in many ways, that's what Gray and Green is about -- trying to help individuals become more resilient and through older people and their circles of influence, helping communities become more resilient in the face of climate change.

Audrey Hamilton: Okay, well Dr. Smyer, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been a real pleasure.

Mick Smyer: Thanks.

Audrey Hamilton: Thanks for listening to our podcast. Make sure you check out our other episodes of Speaking of Psychology - and please subscribe if you haven’t already. We are a proud member of the APA Podcast Network, which includes other great podcasts. Please check out APA Journals Dialogue, If you want to hear about the latest and most exciting psychology research. And if you are interested in the practice of psychology, be sure to listen to Progress Notes. Topics include how health care policy and social media affect practicing psychologists. You can find those podcasts on iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also go to our website, www.speakingofpsychology.org to listen to even more episodes and gather more resources on the topics we discussed.

Thanks for joining us. I’m Audrey Hamilton with the American Psychological Association and this is Speaking of Psychology.