As we once again approach another change in the seasons, I have been reflecting on the many persistent environmental challenges we face. I spent my summer at home in Utah, where we continue in an extreme drought and faced record high temperatures. This, in addition to smoke from the ongoing fires in Northern California and the spike in COVID cases from the delta strain of the virus, gave the summer a distinctly apocalyptic feel.  

In spite of these challenges, however, I generally remain hopeful. I watched (some of) my neighbors turn off their sprinklers for the season. In my classes, many of the students have gotten vaccinated and continue to mask, even though our state has banned mask and vaccine mandates. An Afghan refugee family is moving into the neighborhood today and members of our community banded together to ensure that they would have everything they need to make them feel at home. In the continuing strangeness of these times, I try to focus on the ways that people choose to preserve their communities and the planet more broadly. 

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Hi everyone. As the new SPSSI President I’m writing to you from the state of Maine. If you haven’t been to Maine I hope you will come and visit. Our autumns are striking with stunning fall foliage and beautiful seascapes. Yet as is true in most locations, we are struggling with climate change and understanding all of the impacts climate change may have including on our coast (Maine has the fourth-longest coastline in the United States—longer than California’s). In Maine we struggle with poverty and have the oldest population in the United States. I mention all of these interconnected issues because they speak to SPSSI’s themes and how we need to interlink our studies on various issues and also look to ensure that the studies that we do lead to usable results and actions—not just for some hypothetical place and group but also for the very people with which we live and work. 

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It is with a mixture of sadness and some relief that I lay down the responsibility of the SPSSI presidency. SPSSI is an organisation that I truly love, indeed more so after the work of the last year. It was indeed a pleasure to be, even briefly, the head of such an important group, and I am all too aware of the opportunities, connections, and privileges associated with such a position. Nonetheless, the impressive weight of the responsibility never left my mind. At 85 years old, SPSSI is older than most of us will ever be (the average life expectancy in the US is 78.54 years). And, worth a few million dollars, SPSSI is richer than most of us will ever hope to be (the average individual wealth in the US is $505,421). These considerations put hard, practical meanings to the concept of “commitment to a cause bigger than myself”. I do look forward to the return of more individuality, the freedom to openly support political candidates (go Biden-Harris!), and the ability to occasionally be mistaken, or slightly uncouth, or to just read the room wrong without having it (necessarily) reflect poorly on a group of over three thousand psychologists.

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