Log In
Approaching conversations with others about the environment with a sense of empathy is critical for integrating green initiatives into your events.
When I connected with Marley Finnegan, founder of event consultancy Purpose Sustainability Strategy and Purpose Net Zero, she sent me a list of possible topics we could cover for our interview. I settled on climate psychology — how people think, feel, and behave in relation to the climate crisis.
Marley Finnegan, founder, Purpose Sustainability Strategy and Purpose Net Zero
It’s something that Finnegan, a panelist for the upcoming May 9 PCMA Event Leadership Institute (ELI) webinar “Sustainable Events in Action: Practical Strategies for Impactful Planning,” said she has come to realize is foundational to any conversation in the business events industry around sustainability. That was made apparent to her when she was joined in a panel discussion by climate psychologist Renee Lertzman, Ph.D. The two, along with Alyah Kanso, sustainability manager for the Golden State Warriors, spoke at a session in January in San Francisco hosted by the Society for Sustainable Events. On stage, Finnegan told Convene, “we all talked deeply about how climate grief and climate anxiety are showing up for us and the work that we do.”
What Lertzman shared with the audience, Finnegan said, was also a learning experience for her. “I have this urgency within me” about the climate crisis, she said, “that I want to see other people mirroring.” That has led Finnegan to feel frustrated, she said, when it’s not reciprocated. Listening to Lertzman, who talked about approaching conversations with others about the environment with a sense of empathy, made her realize, “wow, this is actually so deeply psychological.”
According to Lertzman’s website, we need to be “attuning to the very real anxieties, ambivalence, and aspirations many of us are experiencing.” Lertzman recommends five principles to guide people to transform and shift hard behaviors, such as our consumption patterns. “Attune, Reveal, Convene, Equip, and Sustain,” are the principles, Finnegan said, that are “grounded in evidence-based studies, research, best practices and wisdom honed over years of clinical practice — informed by our advisors, experienced clinical practitioners, all of whom have been applying clinical depth psychology to our climate and environmental crises.”
Lertzman’s Project InsideOut guide describes Attune as understanding your people and what they are feeling; Reveal is about becoming compassionate truth tellers and being emotionally honest; Convene means less talking at and more talking with; Equip is about enabling your people (stakeholders, board members, employees, etc.) with playbooks, guidance, training, and resources; and Sustain goes beyond the activation, pledge, event, or challenge to foster ongoing opportunities to engage.
Finnegan also spoke about another resource that has helped her be attuned to other’s feelings about the environment: the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, whose first rule of effective communication is to “‘know thy audience.’ “Climate change public engagement efforts must start with the fundamental recognition that people are different and have different psychological, cultural, and political reasons for acting — or not acting — to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” according to its website. Research conducted by this Yale School of the Environment program identified “Global Warming’s Six Americas” — alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful, and dismissive.
The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has identified global warming’s “six Americas.” Artwork by Michael Sloan
Having an Impact
“I think a lot of people think, you know, I’m just one person,” Finnegan said. “It’s just one event. How is this really going to make a difference? And what I think climate scientists are really trying to get across, and what I try to get across is that, literally, every second of every day is our best opportunity to mitigate the worst in climate repercussions. Like everything we do right now is either working toward a better, more resilient future or adding to the problem.”
So far, the business events industry, she said, has been more reactionary than proactive. “We need to be leaders of this change. As an industry, if we are going to wait for someone to tell us that we have to do it differently, that’s going to be too late.”
When asked whether she thinks the current administration’s moves to step away from global climate action will make it easier to be apathetic about sustainable events, Finnegan said she sees just the opposite happening. “I’m seeing an accelerating unification around the understanding that this is our planet. This is where we live. It’s like there is a call to action for community — how we support our neighbors, how we support our food sovereignty and where we get our food, how we support our farmers, the land, and really, how we support ourselves and our own well-being.”
“The world, the environment, the Earth is speaking, and she is speaking louder than any media could,” she said. “I’m seeing this energy and just this feeling of momentum.”
Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.