ENST20001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Ocean Acidification, Ozone Depletion, Planetary Boundaries
24 May 2018
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LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION
• In this subject, we draw on psychological research as a strategy for change
• Use psychology to understand human environment relations, and as a strategy for change - need
knowledge from a range of disciplines
• Problem: Anthropocene, human activities shape the world as significantly as natural processes -
climate change and ecosystem loss as two of the most obvious signs
o Planetary Boundaries - define a safe operating space for humanity
• E.g: chemical pollution, ocean acidification, c.c, biodiversity loss, ozone depletion
• We have exceed these boundaries in critical ways
• Why do we value some environments and not others?
o Appreciating environments: landscape preferences, environments and health, and
connectedness with nature
• Designing environments that people enjoy
• Why do people have such conflicting ideas on how environments should be managed?
o Environmental concern: difference over policy
• Values, trust, belief and risk perception
Hope in the Anthropocene
• Psychologists describe hope as having 2 components:
o Will: a goal-directed determination
o Ways: a sense of goal directed planning
Psychology (Environmental) as a Discipline
• Many different forms of knowledge help us see the ways we act on environmental issues
o Local, traditional, professional and scientific knowledge
• Env. psychology: the study of human-environment relationship using a psychological lens - majorly
looking at the individual scale, not the collective scale
o Shared territory with other social science
• Psychology as a science, interested in how people subjectively experience the world around them
o Both qualitative and quantitative strategies to observe human-environment relationships
