Rebecca Nestor
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rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
Rebecca Nestor
@rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
3.2K followers 4.8K following 160 posts
Climate psychologist: support as we face the climate crisis. Co-chair of @climatepsychol.bsky.social. Workshops, consultancy, keynotes, climate café listening circles. Based in Oxford, UK
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rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
15 November, 2-4 pm, North Wall Arts Centre, South Parade, Oxford, UK.

The RSVP link again: meetu.ps/e/PzNQC/H43G...
October 12, 2025 at 2:25 PM
rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
Oxfordshire climate cafés are starting up again today after a break in August. Today’s is at Common Ground, Little Clarendon Street, Oxford. Free. I’ll be the facilitator today.

Just turn up at 2.30, or RSVP via our Meetup page www.meetup.com/meetup-group...
Poster reads: Oxfordshire Climate Cafés. Take care of the earth. Take care of each other. Feeling concerned or anxious about the climate crisis? You are not alone Join a climate café Scan QR code or visit https://www.meetup.com/meetup-group-climatecafes ~ A chance to share our feelings about the climate crisis ~ ~ A break from climate action or worries ~ ~ No talks, no advice ~ ~ A thinking & feeling space with trained facilitators ~ ~ Come to one café or many ~ 2.30 Sundays, Common Ground, Little Clarendon St: 14 Sep 2025 – 23 Nov 2025 – 14 Dec 2025 – 18 Jan 2026 22 Mar 2026 - 17 May 2026 – 12 July 2026 2.30 Saturdays, North Wall Arts Centre, South Parade: 11 Oct 2025 – 7 Feb 2026 – 18 Apr 2026 – 13 Jun 2026
September 14, 2025 at 8:22 AM
rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
I was honoured to represent @climatepsychol.bsky.social in a letter to the Home Secretary last week protesting against her extraordinary decision to proscribe the non-violent direct action group @palaction.bsky.social
Email. Heading text: Please don't proscribe Palestine Action From the Climate Psychology Alliance, Windfalls, Main Street, Barton St David, Somerton TA11 6BZ For the attention of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP Dear Yvette Cooper We are writing in response to the announcement of your intention to lay a draft proscription order in Parliament next Monday in relation to Palestine Action. We wish to express our strong disagreement with this intention and to ask you to reconsider. The Climate Psychology Alliance is a charitable Community Benefit Society consisting of over six hundred academics, psychological professionals, arts practitioners, and young people who research and explore the psychology of the climate crisis. There are inextricable links between increasing climate impacts and the wars and other conflicts in the Middle East. Worsening climate change is creating increased conflict. As stated in a recent report from the International Rescue Committee, ‘Three decades ago, 44% of conflicts Email continues: happened in climate-vulnerable states. Now it is more than two-thirds. And while the rest of the world has cut extreme poverty by over half since the 1990s, it has grown by half in fragile and conflict-affected states.’ (https://www.rescue.org/press-release/conflict-climate-and-extreme-poverty-time-new-approach-speech-david-miliband) In this context we believe that the UK’s approach should be to focus on doing what it can to minimise the conflict in Palestine and the impacts of that conflict on vulnerable people. We do not see the government taking any action of this kind beyond making vague statements. Instead there is a risk that you will be remembered as the Home Secretary who made it not only illegal but an act of terror to defend Palestinians through non-violent direct action, when Israel’s own actions have been declared war crimes by a UN Commission, the ICC and many other legal bodies. It is not apparent that the actions taken by Palestine Action amount to terrorism. They may have been illegal but that is covered by existing legislation and common law. Designating protest as terrorism creates a serious risk to freedom of speech, not only for Palestine Action itself but for those supporting them. It risks criminalisation of anyone supporting non-violent direct action in support of Palestinians. We think it is important to separate out support for an organisation from endorsement of all views and actions of people associated with the organisation. For example, not all Labour supporters will agree with all actions taken by the party and its individual MPs. Even if the government wanted to stop all civil disobedience, which is ethically and legally problematic, it is not logical to regard all people Email continues: aligning with Palestine Action’s calls for peace for Palestine as supporting the forms of protest you are keen to reduce. Several of us with Labour MPs are aware of significant concern within the parliamentary party about your plans, and we hope you will listen carefully to those concerns. We conclude with an observation from our clinical and research experience of the emotional impact of the climate crisis. In times like ours, with catastrophe feeling very close, there may be pressure on leaders to ‘do something, anything’. This is an understandable reaction but not one we would expect of you as an experienced political leader. Please reconsider this unreflective, punitive step. Yours faithfully Dr Rebecca Nestor, Dr Kate Adams, Co-chairs, Climate Psychology Alliance Professor Paul Hoggett, Adrian Tait, co-founders of CPA Chris Robertson, former Chair Dr Judith Anderson, former Chair Steve Marshall, Treasurer Dr Gareth Morgan, Youth Coordinator Bella Manning, Secretary-designate Linda Aspey, board member Kay Trainor, board member Andrew Briggs, board member Persephone Pearl, board member Dr Siobhan Currie, board member Members of CPA:
June 30, 2025 at 7:03 AM
rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
Delighted to be involved with the Inner Climate Resilience Alliance (ICRA), a new partnership from The Mindfulness Initiative, @climatepsychol.bsky.social & @climatemajority.bsky.social bringing together inner work, climate action & community cohesion. 🧵
Banner reading: ICRA - Inner Climate Response Alliance
June 20, 2025 at 7:51 AM
rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
Do Not Disturb? Looking forward to being in conversation with Paul Hoggett on 3 April, 9.30 am BST, at this Group Relations Australia event. www.grouprelations.org.au/event/on-cli... @climatepsychol.bsky.social @bpsenvpsych.bsky.social @bpsofficial.bsky.social @tavistockrelations.bsky.social
Two frames of a cartoon. In each frame there is a dog sitting at a table comfortably drinking a cup of coffee while flames flicker around. In the second frame, as the flames rise higher, the dog smiles and says ‘Let’s ban straws!’
February 22, 2025 at 8:02 AM
rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
For anyone interested in reading more, here is our abstract. Do get in touch if you’d like to join the continuing discussion following the conference.
Screenshot of the beginning of a conference abstract. The text reads: How are climate emotions constellated? Towards a new experiential inquiry practice ABSTRACT The discourse and associated legitimacy around climate emotions have developed over the last 15 years, bringing together researchers and practitioners seeking to name, contain and normalise a variety of feelings – and their absence – that people can experience in relation to the climate emergency and its socio-ecological consequences. These literatures draw on a range of disciplines (psychotherapy, psychology, social and natural sciences, as well as arts and humanities), and varying onto-epistemological stances on how the world is, how we are connected, and what this might mean for our response-abilities for and with ourselves, each other, and the beyond- and non- human. As a climate psychologist (RN) and a gestalt psychotherapist (AA) – both with career histories in sustainability practice and higher education, and with different relationships with our emotions in response to the climate and ecological crisis – we seek to inquire with others into a temporary, experiential understanding of climate emotions and how people ‘creatively adapt’ to minimise/experience/mobilise their effect/affect in our daily lives. We suggest this may be of interest to qualitative researchers and practitioners to greater understand the complexity, nuance, and symbolic and quotidian manifestations of climate emotions. Intellectual influences We draw inspiration from two linked but distinct areas of scholarship: post humanist ethics (Akomolafe, Holzman and Wootten, 2023; Haraway, 2016), post qualitative inquiry (St. Pierre, 2019), and feminist new materialism (Coleman, Page and Palmer, 2019; Gherardi, 2023), where entanglement is the condition of existence and mattering for all beings. Barad (2007) defines ‘intra-action’, as a departure from inter-action, as processes of relating where human and non-human agency are both entangl…
January 11, 2025 at 2:05 PM
rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
On my way back fr #ECQI in Edinburgh. Outside was bright, freezing, beautiful; inside warm, stimulating, surprising. Anne Augustine & I offered a Game Changer on ‘how are climate emotions constellated?’ - working w the climate café model & an adaptation of constellations, and seeing what emerged.
Image of a table set for a climate café, with food and drink, and sticks, fossils, a length of ivy, shells, seeds, bamboo leaves. In the background, through the window, is Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh
January 11, 2025 at 1:45 PM
rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
If you live in/around Oxford and have interests in climate and protecting our shared home, pls follow @lowcon.bsky.social, a group of knowledgeable volunteers who’ve been working tirelessly for 14 years in this field. Also consider coming to tomorrow’s climate café (I’ll be hosting).
Screenshot of an event description. Image shows a picture of the Earth. Text reads: Climate Café at Common Ground, Little Clarendon Street. Sunday 15 December 2024, 14.30-16.00 GMT. Common Ground Workspace, 37 Little Clarendon Street.
December 14, 2024 at 9:53 AM
rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
PS. This is social media, so I've said less in this thread than I did IRL about the way the work affected me. But it did. I've learned the hard way about duvet days and leaning into my relationship with the more-than-human. As I'm in Copenhagen, here's a pic showing what late capitalism does to us.
November 27, 2024 at 2:27 PM
rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
...and my exploration of whether climate comms work can be thought of as traumatic (I think it can) ...
November 27, 2024 at 2:09 PM
rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
Then there was the analysis...
November 27, 2024 at 2:06 PM
rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
I was aware of climate psychology's exploration of the deep grief, loss, and dependency that Global North societies encourage us to deny. And of the challenges of climate change as a super-wicked problem. I wondered if these would show up in climate comms work somehow.
November 27, 2024 at 2:01 PM
rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
In the research design I kind of set out to do the impossible: combining multiple research traditions, generating 150,000 words of transcription, holding multiple roles myself...I went into it with a lot of anxiety but also with hope (sound familiar to anyone in climate comms?)
November 27, 2024 at 1:59 PM
rebeccaclimate.bsky.social
I studied what it feels like to work in climate change communication. The thesis is called 'The ticking clock thing' and this quote encapsulates a lot of the anxious, frenetic background to the work.
Screenshot of a slide, which reads: 'The ticking clock thing': researching climate trauma in organisations. Then there is a quotation: “we’re always working with this like ticking clock thing, ticking clock thing, and we…we try and go faster and faster and faster and get there quicker and quicker and quicker because of the ticking clock thing”
November 27, 2024 at 1:52 PM