Q&A with researcher Dana R Fisher - Part 2
A conversation on activist tactics, avoiding burnout and whether scientists also can be climate activists.
Welcome back to Climate Psyched, the newsletter where we explore all things psychological, behavioral and emotional related to the climate and ecosystem crises.
Sharing the continuation of the incredibly thoughtful conversation I had with researcher Dana R Fisher, author of the new book Saving Ourselves, earlier this summer. This is the second part of the conversation, you can find the first part here. In this second part, Dana talks about what activist tactics research shows are effective, the importance of avoiding burnout and whether social scientists also can be climate activists. I hope you enjoy reading!
FRIDA: So it’s important to work collectively, and to amplify the effects of what the climate movement is doing. Then, what are the best chances of moving politicians and other people in power with climate engagement - is it dialogue meetings, email campaigns, occupying their offices or getting their attention in other ways?
DANA: So I think that given where we are in the climate crisis, it is an “all of the above” answer, right?
I believe that we need to be using every tool in our toolbox to get the attention of policymakers and to be pushing them to make the right decisions. So that means when you have democratic elections pushing for people to take office who will not take fossil fuel money and will not support fossil fuel expansion. That's very, very important. That being said, once people are in office, there are lots of tools we can use to try to push them to do the right thing.
And that runs again from coming meetings with them, this is where collective action is so much more valuable than just individual action! Sure you can write an individual letter to an elected official, they will count it. At least in the United States what they do is they read it and they say I got one letter about this, or you can have a letter that your whole community signs, that your school board signs, or your specific group in your community. That's working on this issue, whatever collective you're involved with, and then you can do a visit.Sending the message and then visiting with the officials to show that you're serious and you're willing to take the time.
These all matter. And when they don't work, you need to add and expand your toolbox and use more disruptive types of action. I mean, disruptive actions can serve multiple purposes, as I talk about in the book. In some cases, it's just about making sure the elected officials and the officials you're targeting pay attention, but then they also help to get media attention so that more people learn about and hear about what's going on.
And that can be, you know, both within your community nationally but also internationally, and that helps everybody to feel more like there's a collective, like they're less alone, like more people care about an issue that you care about - and then that will also mobilize people to join in the activism.
So I think all of those things matter, and I do think that it's extremely valuable to start with thinking through how to affect change in your local community and then build from there, rather than thinking nationally. I mean even though, say, Sweden is a small country it still makes a lot more sense to start in one city and then build out to the whole country, rather than thinking about something that's less embedded in your community. Because it's a lot easier to get people to take the time and effort to do work when you can see the tangible effects of it. And no matter how small your country is. It's very hard to see the tangible effects of federal or national policy really quickly.
I've been talking a lot with groups like Mom's Clean Air Force which works around the country, and one of the campaigns they have is that they're getting people in their communities to work with their schools to transition to electric school buses.
Electric school buses. I mean, they seem like a really small thing in some ways, but if you transition to electric school buses, first of all, you get the school buses off of fossil fuels, which is really good. In addition to that, it reduces particulate matter in the air, which reduces asthma rates, which has an effect on the school kids.
There's a whole bunch of these opportunities to do that kind of work starting at the local and then letting it, you know, spill over and trickle up to the national level.
And it's not just about making decisions as a consumer, it's not just making decisions as a community member. It's about doing all of those things.
FRIDA: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think there is sometimes a tendency to wanting to to figure out what's the one best thing to do, like what's the ONE action for climate that we can take, rather than looking at what’s the plethora of actions that we need to take, and that we can take collectively. And if we do work at a collective we can also, you know, we can take turns in taking when we can share the tasks among us. So, you know, not one of us can do everything, but together we can do a lot of different things.
DANA: Yeah, and working as a collective also means being able to have time off, which is really important. We have to have time to just be ourselves and to restore because this is a struggle and it's a hard struggle and sometimes it's going to be really depressing.
And so I think it's really important to have one, I mean, as you know this, more than I do, but having one another to support, but also to hold each other up and to take turns so that everybody gets a break.
FRIDA: I think that that's a challenge for a lot of climate groups to establish those social norms within the group to really sort of role model taking breaks and role model pausing and allowing that. In the midst of this sense of acuteness that we're in. We work with a lot of climate activists that are in their early twenties and they're burnt out, you know.
DANA: Yeah, I mean, and the burnout can, I mean, burnout can do a bunch of things. But one of the things that I think groups need to think through is how to limit burnout. And you know, if you take those breaks, burnout can just mean a temporary break is needed, but if you wait long enough the burnout can really redirect people into completely just to give up.
And when people give up, well, that's when things get even worse. So we need to figure out how to limit that.
FRIDA: So, time for the last question, which is about how you view the issue about whether scientists can be activists. Is it possible to combine the roles of activist and scientist without losing one's objectivity? And in an ongoing climate crisis is it even possible to be objective and stay silent?
DANA; That is such an important question and, and I can just basically respond with my own personal answer. Now there are a number of particularly natural scientists who have worked on the climate crisis and who have decided to become activists because they feel like people aren't listening to them and then they're scientists. I'm a social scientist. And you know as I was doing, my PhD and finishing my degree and becoming a professor we were frequently cautioned against what we call “going native”, which is becoming one with your subject too much and therefore not being able to be objective And, you know, I saw that actually in some of my co students who ended up dropping out my program to be activists. There were lots of people who came to their PhD because they wanted to do activism and study activism. And it ended up becoming what we in my world call “Me search”, right? “Me search”, which is studying what you do yourself, makes it very hard to have objectivity there.
Having done this for 25 years my strength lies in what I call bringing data to power, which is doing the research in a structured systematic way that then helps to inform and provide insights. I mean, I wrote this book “Saving ourselves” specifically to take the findings that I have and then explain what they can teach us about how to save ourselves and how to make climate activism matter and get us where we need to go.
So that's where I see my activism, in taking the findings of my research and channeling it to help those who I think need to be helped. But I don't do that activism when I'm doing our research. I think it's really important to draw a line there.
And one of the reasons for that is because I think I need to be able to keep looking at the research and the research subjects in a way that is objective, as I'm analyzing what works and what doesn’t. And I mean, some activism doesn't work, some activism does work. And when you're part of it, you actually have much more investment in the specific action or specific tactic, and that may be challenging. I mean, for me it certainly would be challenging.
Then the other thing I would just say is one of the other values for me is that I do a lot of work communicating research findings to the general public. I get asked to do a lot of media. I wrote for the IPCC as a contributing author. And I am 100% certain I would not be asked to do those things if I were doing the activism, even if I were doing this participatory research where I was a participant, but also did it, because it would be seen that I was pushing for an agenda that is specifically my agenda. What I really want is for us to address the climate crisis, and I want us to use the best research we can to do it.
So I need to do the best research I can, that will help to contribute to help everybody do what's needed to stop the crisis or limit the crisis at least.
So, I mean, so that's my answer. But I think everybody has a different answer. And I think it's a little different if I were a natural scientist who was studying ocean salinity or melting ice caps. I think I would feel so disempowered, because all of my research is telling us something really drastic that the world isn't changing for. I actually study the decision makers and I know from some of my work, what matters for the decision makers and what doesn't. But I can't do that research if I come in saying, hi, I'm an activist with so-and-so, but I'm also going to study you.
You can count on me to be fair and not use the subjective lens to analyze what you say. I wouldn't get those kinds of meetings if I were doing it as an activist. So that's my answer, but I think everybody needs to do it themselves at this point. As I said, we're in an all hands on deck moment. Everybody should do anything they can. I think the best thing we can all do is figure out what our individual super powers are. Where our strengths lie and take advantage of them.
And for me, you know, my super power, I think, is in doing the research in a way that is accessible but is also rigorous enough that people will listen.
So I'm gonna stick with that for me.
FRIDA: And I would assume that even communicating your research in a very objective way, will in some groups still be perceived as being not objective or not neutral because communicating the research right now is challenging business as usual, and is challenging the current system and that will stir up emotions and stir up persistence, right?
DANA: Yeah, I mean, what's very interesting is on the one hand my analysis, my research and reporting on the research is very clearly showing that we are in a climate crisis, and that fossil fuel interests are exerting privileged access and power that is keeping us in our climate crisis and worsening it, right?
Some people will push back on that - and many of those people have direct ties to fossil fuel interests - saying that I'm not being objective. However, at the same time, what's interesting is while there's push back on that side there's also push back when I criticize specific groups on the left because my research shows that what they're doing is turning off other people from participating in the movement, or because I'm criticizing a tactic. So it's really interesting.
One time I was doing research, after the big March For Our Lives, in the United States. The March For Our Lives was the big mobilization that happened after the Parkland school shooting in 2018 on Valentine's Day, where all these children were murdered by another student at a school in Florida, and there was this huge protest that happened that was organized by some of the survivors and funded by a bunch of famous people in the United States.
So I did research on the people who participated and what I found was that most of the people who participated were not children, actually, the average age was quite old. And my interpretation of that is because for every kid who came there was at least one, if not more than one, adult who showed up and participated as well.
So there's validity to the data but also the methodology is sound and what I've used for many years, but I ended up getting a whole bunch of basically hate emails about how I was a plant of the conservatives because I was trying to discredit these young people in their movement.
And that's really counterproductive. I mean, obviously you know, you have to be open to positive and negative findings. I actually did not interpret that finding as negative. But you know, they did and instead of accusing it of anything, I think it's worth learning from that.
One thing that I learned from that is that parents are a real force to be reckoned with and we should really be thinking about the role that parents play in participating in social movements because their kids care about an issue, because they're worried about their children. That's a really valuable finding from that.
So, I've gotten criticism on both sides, which is the basic point. And I think in the end, the way that I respond to that is I just stand by the research, which is one of the reasons I try so hard to make sure the research is as good as it possibly can be. So, you know, if somebody gets completely different findings I wanna know why that is. But if you're just gonna accuse me because you have a personal perspective and my research doesn't support your perspective, well, that's not how research works.
FRIDA: This was so incredibly interesting. Thank you so much, Dana. I just feel like I've learned so much.
DANA: I'm so happy to do this. Well, I'm happy. And it was so wonderful to chat with you.
