Shifting Public Consciousness: Jessica Kleczka, Climate Justice Activist. The Story Anew #22.

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Jessica Kleczka is a climate psychologist, climate justice activist and writer based in the UK. Originally from a coal town in Poland, she currently works in climate policy with a focus on resource stewardship and phasing out fossil fuels. Jessica has worked with a number of grassroots organisations from across the world and is passionate about amplifying underrepresented voices. Her research focuses on radical social change through values-based and community-led approaches.

In this episode, we discuss:
*The importance of climate policies that really reflect human behaviour
*The problems with focusing on individual choices and actions rather than deep systemic change
*The importance of understanding people's values when working towards behaviour change - in particular the importance of Universalism as a value
*Where do our values come from? The role of the media and how we can begin to shift people's values towards something more pro-environmental - and can we shift those values in time?
*What Jessica learnt about values from visiting intentional communities and becoming part of them
*The challenges of fighting for systemic change while navigating the system we are in
*What to do about young people who are disillusioned with politics and feel hopeless about the future - how can we shift from despair into hope and action?
*The issues with our Western society’s tendency toward binary thinking
*The problem with climate Doomism and talking about climate ‘adaptation’ and how they reinforce climate racism and injustice / colonialism

The Story Anew is a podcast and video series in which we'll meet amazing people from all over the world who are working to redefine the dominant narrative of our times - that of infinite growth and consumption. These are the people working towards what Joanna Macy calls The Great Turning - the shifting of our Industrial Growth Society, which prioritises infinite growth over life - to a Life Sustaining Society.

The people you'll meet are working in regeneration, activism, systems design, permaculture, trauma healing, decolonisation, climate change and generally working to fundamentally change the way we do things as a species so that we can live on this planet more harmoniously with our fellow beings and become good ancestors.

[shayontonighosh]

I love getting to listen to such interesting people because of your efforts, Gwyneth. Thank you.

[jessicakleczka]

Thank you for inviting me Gwyneth, really enjoyed our conversation!

[geoffginter]

This was a great conversation with a unique perspective. I really enjoyed it. Thanks Gwyneth and Jessica. 😎

[starkeysusan]

Thanks for the great invitation to climate activist to keep going, with EQ, and not be overcome with Fight, Flight or Freeze defenses (among all the other good research you two shared).

[ofirshorshy]

Conservative and conventional isn't the same.
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