SALT for Climate: Redefining Urgency and Transformation in Climate Leadership

The Sensemaking, Action, and Leadership Training (SALT) for Climate initiative tackles a crucial blindspot in today’s climate response: the lack of conscious, integrative sensemaking as a foundation for meaningful action. SALT for Climate brings together cutting-edge psychosocial research, skilled facilitation in human dynamics, and transformative Big Picture metatheories to help climate leaders address the psychological and systemic gaps in existing political, economic, and scientific paradigms.

Through specialized training and coaching, SALT enhances the emotional, social, and consciousness capacities of those leading climate efforts, bridging the divide between climate policies and public understanding—a gap that often stalls progress and drives polarization. This scalable approach complements the scientific and technical aspects of climate action, fostering greater public engagement and supporting more impactful, integrative climate leadership.

In this episode of IAM Insider, host Josh Leonard sits down with Gail Hochachka and Lisa Gibson, leaders of the SALT for Climate initiative, to explore their pioneering approach to climate action. They discuss the often-overlooked psychological and social dimensions of climate work, share insights from their work on collective sensemaking and leadership training, and explain why a focus on human dynamics may be the missing piece in our response to the climate crisis. Listen in to discover how SALT for Climate is helping us rethink what effective climate action looks like.

Good to see Gail Hochachka, Lisa Gibson, and Josh Leonard introduce their SALT for Climate.

I observe that lots is not being said here:
Limits to Growth (1972).
Ecological Overshoot (Catton, 1980).

To more fully participate in our personal (intentions, arts, crafts, morals, behaviours, skills), inter-personal (relations, ethics, cultures), and eco-social (ecological, social, political, economic, technological) worlds, at local, national, and global scales, we need to become ever more fully centred in our common Heart-Centred Humanity.

In the 1920s, Alfred North Whitehead presented his readings on Cartesian body-mind bifurcation, highlighting the dire consequences of Cartesian bifurcation for modern philosophy, education, and society. (See Alfred North Whitehead (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)).

Now, in the 2020s, verifications through selected measurements tend to be the only approved considerations in many modern settings.

For many modern scientists, only their selected measurements count; for many modern economists, only their selected measures of economic growth count; for many modern politicians, only their selected poll numbers count.

Modern people often forget that their common reductionisms undermine the Quality of Divine Qualities, like Beauty in Arts and Skills, Goodness in Relations and Cultures, and Truth in Sciences, amongst Humanity’s Choirs of Heart-Centred Beings, and amidst Nature’s Orchestras of Living Beings.

Since the 1970s, many neoliberalists have focused on endless economic growth for their businesses and shareholders on our finite shared planet, pursuing ever more profits with heartless greed, powering the wealth supremacies of economic elites, at local, national, and global scales, while undermining and degrading the development and wellbeing of many millions of marginalised peoples, with the web of life on our planet paying shocking unsustainable prices. (See Agenda | r3.0 Conference 2024 (r3-0.org), and r3.0 (vimeo.com)).

Said more concisely, neoliberalists have worked for 40+ years to externalize nature, individualize people, deregulate ethics, privatize public services, and globalize local produce, turning citizens into “consumers”, within their degenerative, kiddie-toxic, all-consuming, supposedly “free” markets.

Now, wherever we live on our precious planet, we see life on earth struggling under increasing loads of human-induced stress, as clean air, natural waters, and fertile soils continue to be turned into dirty air, polluted waters, and wasted soils, undermining, degrading, and destroying the habitats of many plants, many animals, and many human beings. (See HOME | Climate Extremes, A just world on a safe planet: a Lancet Planetary Health–Earth Commission report on Earth-system boundaries, translations, and transformations - The Lancet Planetary Health, Living Planet Report 2024: Download & Key Findings | WWF (panda.org), 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth | BioScience | Oxford Academic (oup.com), Emissions Gap Report 2024 | UNEP, Too Little Too Late or One Giant Leap? A public lecture with Sandrine Dixson-Declève, in Melbourne, 28/10/24, and planetaryhealthcheck2024_report.pdf).

So, we continue to see many modern people in their lives and work today habitually and promptly shut down any concerns they may have for the Quality of Divine Qualities, the Quality of the Lives of various Peoples, and the Quality of Life on our planet, in their normal everyday considerations.

Here we ask: can we change out of our modern toxic habits in Cartesian body-mind heartlessness into inhabiting more fully all-inclusive Heartfulness, with universal compassion and deep wisdom, in our tripartite Kosmos (Pneuma/Nous-psyche-soma in Greek, Spiritus/Intellectus-anima-corpus in Latin, Rūḥ/‘Aql-nafs-jism in Arabic, and Heart-soul-body in English)?

More simply, can human beings learn to love each other, to thrive with each other and with all living beings, at local, national and global scales, in relative harmony within “me”, in my life, with “us”, in our community, and with “all of life, altogether”, on our finite shared planet?

Here we try to connect with people, who are inhabiting life-affirming values in various ways and in varying degrees, within various Primal, Oriental, Abrahamic, Modern, Postmodern, Metamodern, and Other Schools, ALTOGETHER.

To regenerate life on our finite shared planet, we need to thrive in Heart-soul-body, in each person, in our inter-personal relations, and in our eco-social organisations, within the ecological thresholds of our planet’s various habitats and matrices, and we need to inhabit secure social foundations with fair social allocations for everybody with everybody in shared practices of inter-generational justice across current and future generations of all living beings. (See Roots & Shoots USA - Youth Movement of the Jane Goodall Institute (rootsandshoots.org), DEAL (doughnuteconomics.org)).

We hope, especially for the Wellbeing of Life in the lives of our young people in our emerging generations in forthcoming years and decades, that we can regenerate Life in All of Us, Altogether, NOW. (See The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens, Climate Change 1958: The Bell Telephone Science Hour (youtube.com), What is long-view leadership and why are Elders calling for it? (theelders.org), Sustainability scientists challenge the dominant economic system, Margaret Thatcher - UN General Assembly Climate Change Speech (1989) (youtube.com), Source of Synergy Foundation |, and A Box Filled with Fears, Hearts Filled with Hope - (scientistswarning.org)).