Mind & Life Podcast

Karen O’Brien – Why We Matter

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June 19, 2025

View or download a transcript of this episode

In this episode, Wendy speaks with professor, writer, and thought leader Karen O’Brien. Karen is an expert on the human and social dimensions of climate change, and her work helps us understand the role of the mind and worldview in how we create and respond to environmental change, and global change more broadly. This conversation covers many topics, including:

Karen O’Brien, PhD
  • her path into environmental studies and understanding how humans respond to climate change;
  • consequences of a reductionist worldview;
  • understanding quantum social change;
  • entanglement, and relationships as a fundamental aspect of our world;
  • the importance of ethics and values in a system;
  • our power as individuals to change systems;
  • exploring causality and challenging the ‘single cause’;
  • why the way we show up matters;
  • how contemplative practice can help us embody transformative change;
  • envisioning a new paradigm;
  • Indigenous wisdom and interconnected views of nature;
  • emotional difficulties in deeply accepting an interconnected reality;
  • acknowledging and working with eco-grief and eco-anxiety;
  • living with uncertainty;
  • challenges in measuring transformative change;
  • art as a lens to understanding;
  • and the many possibilities for scaling change into societies.

Karen O’Brien, PhD, is an internationally recognized expert on the human and social dimensions of global environmental change, and her research focuses on themes related to climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation. She is interested in how transdisciplinary and integral approaches to global change research can contribute to a better understanding of how societies both create and respond to change, and particularly the role of beliefs, values and worldview in transformations to sustainability. She is committed to understanding and engaging with equitable transformations to a thriving world. Karen is currently focusing on how to scale transformative change, and exploring the potential for quantum social change in theory and practice.

Karen’s recent books include You Matter More Than You Think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World and Climate and Society: Transforming the Future (with Robin Leichenko). She is a co-chair of the International Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) transformative change assessment. In 2021 she was co-recipient of the BBVA Foundation’s Frontiers of Knowledge Award for Climate Change. She has also been involved for many years in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for which she shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Karen is the co-founder of cCHANGE, an Oslo-based organization that engages individuals and organizations with transformations to sustainability. 

Resources

Faculty page at University of Oslo

Supported by the generosity of
The BESS Family Foundation