There is a danger, in suggesting that therapy might help, of pathologising climate anxiety; turning it into a mental health problem that needs to be cured – medicated or spirited away with mindfulness or talking therapy . Many people I interviewed were faced with such reactions from friends, family, colleagues, GPs, and, occasionally, even therapists.
This is not how the author of Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis Sally Weintrobe thinks. “It is important to say that anxiety is a signal that there is something wrong. It’s a perfectly normal healthy reaction to a worrying situation. We mustn’t pathologise climate anxiety. Obviously it can get very extreme – but I would say that government inaction on the climate crisis is pretty extreme, so it’s hardly surprising that people are very worried.” What Knapp, James and Perrin said helped them most was having their emotions validated in therapy – and understanding that their feelings were meaningful and valuable.
Caroline Hickman, a psychotherapist, climate psychology researcher and board member of the Climate Psychology Alliance, says, “I would worry about people who aren’t distressed – given that this is what is happening, how come?” She believes that people are using psychological defences such as denial “as a way of coping and reducing the fear that they feel”. This can leave the climate-anxious with a sense of isolation, frustration and abandonment, as others tell themselves, “Oh, well, the government will save us; technology will save us; if it was that bad, somebody would have done something,” she says. “Those are all rationalisations against existential terror of annihilation – and that’s the reality of what we’re potentially looking at.”
To face this reality is to come out of what Weintrobe calls “the climate bubble”, which, she says, “has been supported by a culture of uncare, a culture that actively seeks to keep us in a state of denial about the severity of the climate crisis”. She explains: “The bubble protects you from reality, and when you start seeing the reality, it’s hardly surprising that you’re going to experience a whole series of shocks.” She prefers the term climate trauma over anxiety because “it is traumatising to see that you are caught up in a way of living, whether you like it or not, that makes you a victim and a perpetrator of damaging the Earth, which is what keeps us all alive”. We are living, she says, “in a political system that generates a mental health crisis, because it places burdens on people that are too much to bear, as well as burdens on the Earth”.
The thing about trauma is that it can reignite earlier, individual trauma. That experience of coming out of the climate bubble and having your worries dismissed, of realising that you have been abandoned by people who were supposed to look after you, can be particularly triggering. For Weintrobe, this is where therapy can have a role to play, “in helping people to disentangle what is personal to them and their own individual histories, from what is hitting them from the outside”.
It is perhaps surprising to hear Weintrobe – a psychoanalyst – say that while there is a role for therapy in addressing climate anxiety, it is limited. We need to normalise this distress, she says, but not by pretending it’s not there, or shouldn’t be. “It’s very perverse that normalising has come to mean getting rid of anything that’s disturbing. Can we make it normal that we are very disturbed and bothered by what is going on, and help each other?” She recommends meeting to talk in groups about climate anxiety, such as at the climate cafes run by the Climate Psychology Alliance. Hickman runs psycho-educational groups with youth activists to address the impact of the climate crisis on mental health, where they discuss ways to support themselves and each other.
[ID: four screenshots of select parts of the linked article, Don’t Tell Me to Despair About the Climate: Hope Is a Right We Must Protect, by Morgan Florsheim. The screenshots read as follows, with some sections highlighted for emphasis:
One - Recently I read an essay that kept me up at night. The piece, Under the Weather by climate journalist Ash Sanders, left me with an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach that I found myself struggling to shake, even weeks later.The personal essay tells the story of Sanders and a mentor of hers, Chris Foster. Sanders recounts how both she and Foster have struggled for much of their adult lives with a gripping sense of impending doom, a depression deeply tied to their grief for a world lost. She writes about the newly coined terms for environmentally related mental health problems—eco-anxiety, climate grief, pre-traumatic stress disorder—and suggests that these conditions should not necessarily be viewed as disorders, but rather as the only reasonable response to a world experiencing catastrophe.
Two - But equally, I know what it is to watch someone you love feel crushed by the weight of the world, and to feel helpless in lifting that burden. I’m 22, barely out of college, and already I have seen more friends than I could have ever imagined fall into deep depression, magnified by their care for the world and the way they felt helpless to stop the suffering within it. I know the way depression closes a person off to the good and spotlights the bad, how it sows seeds of shame and self-doubt and sits back to watch them grow. I wish that I didn’t. Highlighted for emphasis: Depression tells us that we are at once powerless and culpable, and therefore the only logical response is to disengage, turn inward, eschew connection—a response which only serves to reinforce the oppressive systems like racial injustice and capitalism that are truly responsible for our suffering.
Three - In one of my final college classes over Zoom in spring 2020, my professor, environmental anthropologist Myles Lennon, led us through a discussion of Braiding Sweetgrass, the awe-inspiring book by Indigenous scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer. Kimmerer writes of the endurance of Indigenous people (highlighted for emphasis): “despite exile, despite a siege four hundred years long, there is something, some heart of living stone, that will not surrender.” The climate crisis is not the first time a people has faced the end of the world. As we navigate this latest existential threat, we would do well to listen to Kimmerer and other Indigenous leaders. As my professor put it that day, (highlighted for emphasis) existence can cohabitate with collapse. It is not one or the other.
Four - I have a lot of decisions ahead of me. As I consider how I want to live my life, where to dedicate my energy, I refuse to accept the idea that I must sacrifice all joy to attend to the world’s problems. I know myself to be more helpful when I have addressed my own needs: needs for good food and good company, for hope, for long afternoons in the sunshine. I am grateful for the teachers that I have had in this movement, such as professor Lennon, and the people who have reminded me of all the reasons to imagine a brighter future. I know that hope is not a happy accident. (Highlighted for emphasis) Hope is a right we must protect. Hope is a discipline, according to Mariame Kaba, an organizer and educator building the movement for transformative justice.
(Entire paragraph highlighted for emphasis) The climate crisis is ongoing. And, also, a bird is building a nest in the eaves outside my window. Come spring, there will be new birth. In shaky hands, I hold these two truths together.
Today, please take a moment to remember that there is still so much beauty and complexity and amazing, inexplicable wonder in the world. We are not lost. The Earth is not lost. There is still so much worth fighting for.
“The climate crisis is ongoing. And, also, a bird is building a nest in the eaves outside my window. Come spring, there will be new birth. In shaky hands, I hold these two truths together.”
most damaging idea of the 21st century: the conviction of vast numbers of people that human history will end within our lifetimes
climate change represents world-altering tragedy if unchecked, but not even in the worst-case scenario does it mean “literally everyone dies”
yet so many people have jumped already to “it’s over, the world is going to end, we can do nothing about it” and are just paralyzingly cynical. How do I explain that the power to imagine a future is essential for creating it
you know the thing where trauma can cause you to just. not expect to live much longer so when you get to 30 you don’t know what to do because you thought you’d be dead by 25
That is happening to all of us right now on a society-wide scale
A lot of people are like. REALLY angry at me for suggesting that “be depressed and do nothing” isn’t necessarily the only response to climate change.
this,this,this,this,this,this, and like, 700 other sources will tell you that most of the effects of climate change will be reversible even if we pass the ‘threshold’ of a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in global temperature
BUT. Even if the worst happens, it will be important to be doing things other than wallowing in misery???
I’m not trying to be callous but for people living today it’s wildly unlikely for the results to be “literally immediate death.”
People will get displaced from their homes by rising sea levels. We have like, years, probably decades, before that happens. It seems so fucked up to decide that we should do nothing, because we’ve already decided they’re going to die anyway????
If a bunch of us are going to die, why not die trying to help each other? Why not try to make sure fewer people die? Why not do something that might reduce someone’s suffering or give them food or clean water or a place to sleep?
I don’t know how to explain to you that people need socks during the apocalypse
I keep recommending “The Great Derangement” by Amitav Ghosh because it is a very unflinching look at how culpable we are - not for having families, or forgetting to use the right spoons - but for consistently choosing the luxurious delusions of apocalypses. People can lovingly envision a thousand apocalypses, lavishly decorated by the pop culture we’ve gobbled down; but the reverse is not true, and we lack the imagination that is quite literally needed for the future. To the point where planning for the future is actively undermined by people at all levels, stating that it’s unrealistic. We are at a turning point of human history where people are watching each other knock holes in a shared lifeboat, because “everyone knows that lifeboats are predestined to sink.”
It’s considered unrealistic to imagine the prosperous and equitable future of the next generation, because it doesn’t match pop culture. We have actively given up our responsibilities of stewardship - literally the purpose of human existence - because Hollywood made it look hard. We are forgoing our natural bonds and our collective power because we agreed that our neighbours will probably turn on us, and when we look at the self-fulfilling prophecies and natural consequences of our behavior (pandemic, natural disasters) we claim it’s evidence that we can’t improve, instead of addressing the poor behavior.
Ghosh argues that one of the most radical and revolutionary things that we can do (and in the West, the foremost ETHICAL thing to do) is to task ourselves with reprogramming our imaginations to something functional. In this scenario, everyone can participate in the work; writers can literally take readers by the hand and heal them, people can lead and teach each other on social media, unions can include it in discussions, parents can teach their children, children can teach their parents, and everyone can correct each other. Oh, and people who like boycotts and clout can start a movement demanding more imagination in media. I agree with this, and it has underpinned my work and activism ever since.
most damaging idea of the 21st century: the conviction of vast numbers of people that human history will end within our lifetimes
climate change represents world-altering tragedy if unchecked, but not even in the worst-case scenario does it mean “literally everyone dies”
yet so many people have jumped already to “it’s over, the world is going to end, we can do nothing about it” and are just paralyzingly cynical. How do I explain that the power to imagine a future is essential for creating it
you know the thing where trauma can cause you to just. not expect to live much longer so when you get to 30 you don’t know what to do because you thought you’d be dead by 25
That is happening to all of us right now on a society-wide scale
A lot of people are like. REALLY angry at me for suggesting that “be depressed and do nothing” isn’t necessarily the only response to climate change.
this,this,this,this,this,this, and like, 700 other sources will tell you that most of the effects of climate change will be reversible even if we pass the ‘threshold’ of a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in global temperature
BUT. Even if the worst happens, it will be important to be doing things other than wallowing in misery???
I’m not trying to be callous but for people living today it’s wildly unlikely for the results to be “literally immediate death.”
People will get displaced from their homes by rising sea levels. We have like, years, probably decades, before that happens. It seems so fucked up to decide that we should do nothing, because we’ve already decided they’re going to die anyway????
If a bunch of us are going to die, why not die trying to help each other? Why not try to make sure fewer people die? Why not do something that might reduce someone’s suffering or give them food or clean water or a place to sleep?
I don’t know how to explain to you that people need socks during the apocalypse
Artist in Residence Commission / Fort Worth, Texas (2019 - 2022)
From November 2019 onwards I shall begin an interdisciplinary residency with The Art Galleries at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas, working in conjunction with the Institute for Environmental Studies:
‘It’s main purpose is facilitating faculty collaboration on interdisciplinary projects outside home departments. Simply put, the Institute, which was founded in 2003, defines and solves environmentally related problems through education and research. And they do this by partnering with environmental nonprofits, law firms, government agencies and businesses, bringing current issues into the classroom’ Professor Becky Johnson says ‘… that the Institute breaks down the silo-effect allowing faculty to work outside their departments.’
The residency will explore concepts related to ‘Eco Grief’ & ‘Climate Anxiety’ within an extraction-rich geographical environment.
The project will run from 2019 to 2022 and will culminate in an exhibition.
Curator: Sara-Jayne Parsons // Director, The Art Galleries at TCU Art, Fort Worth Contemporary Arts
it’s already snowing outside / I thought summer just ended / I turned on the AC yesterday / today I turned on the heat / plastic wrapping on my frozen lasagna / it’s in the recycling bin but I still feel guilty / I thought it was fall / I fell to my knees when I saw the snow / intricate flakes on my arms that I can’t shake off / they’re too pretty to ruin / now they’re melted and ruined / I can’t shake the feeling that the world is ending / tell me / when the world ends will I still feel guilty?
So a few days ago, an unfinished draft report from the IPCC was leaked to the media. I’ve been getting a lot of asks about this report and what it means for humanity, so I’m coming off hiatus to talk about it.
Please keep in mind that this is a draft report. This is not the full report - we don’t have access to that yet, and it won’t be released until between this summer and next year (as mentioned in the article linked above). We can’t get the full picture about the climate emergency just by reading short quotes from a leaked draft report that we don’t actually have access to.
Also, the thing with draft reports is that they’re unfinished. They change. The final report may well be very different from what we see here in this article - certainly, it will have more information and more clarity on the situation.
Now onto a few other points, based on some of the asks I’ve received:
1) There is nothing in this new IPCC draft report that those of us who are climate-aware didn’t already know about. The findings of this report - or what we currently know about them - are the same as before: that scientists are worried about tipping points in the climate system which, if warming continues past certain thresholds, could worsen existing climate impacts and lead to new risks for human life and civilisation.
Despite the more alarming language used in the report, it’s nothing new for climate-aware people: it essentially says what scientists and activists have been saying this whole time. IPCC reports are just collections of thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers about various climate impacts. This isn’t new stuff that we should be surprised about: it’s all in the scientific literature, in the news, and in the world all around us.
2) No, this report is not proof of near-term human extinction. It’s not proof of anything, except that climate change is an emergency. I’ve had a few people ask me if this new IPCC draft report means that we’re all doomed, or if it means inevitable near-term human extinction is coming.
In a word: no.
There is a quote in the article that concerns me: “Life on Earth can recover from a drastic climate shift by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems … humans cannot”.
I worry that this may become the next “12 years left until the end of the world”: a single quote that is taken out of context and treated as an absolute inevitability or a certain, authoritative prediction. Already, some people are taking this to mean that we are inevitably doomed, or that we are going to go extinct soon no matter what we do. But the thing is that we are part of “life on Earth”. We’re not separate from other life on Earth - we’re part of it.
The quote also talks about other life on Earth “evolving into new species”. This takes thousands of years or more. The article is not talking about imminent human extinction - it’s talking about the risk that human society as it is today, especially in the developing world (where climate disasters are already killing people and affecting societies) will not be able to withstand extreme temperatures and catastrophic climate change of the sort we may see by the end of the century.
This doesn’t mean near-term extinction, and it’s not an inevitability. It means that if we want to maintain a thriving, healthy civilisation, we will need fast, society -wide adaptation in the next few decades, as well as fast decarbonisation and climate mitigation. All of which are still possible.
But our civilisation - as it is today - is built on the assumption that climate conditions will always stay the same. It’s not built for climate change, and as it is today, much of it may not survive the late-century impacts of climate change. That doesn’t mean it can’t change - it means it has to change.
That is an incredibly strong warning, and a crucial one. We shouldn’t need to believe in near-term human extinction to know that this is a powerful motivator for action.
3) The alarming language is a good thing. For years, people have been saying that the IPCC is too conservative, and that the language used in its reports isn’t strong enough. I think it’s clear from what we can see of this draft report that the IPCC is now trying to use hard-hitting language to make the severity of the situation clear to people. (The success of that strategy honestly varies from person to person, but in general, I think it has worked well for activists as well as groups like Extinction Rebellion.)
The fact that the IPCC is now using such hard-hitting language is a good thing. It has the potential to create more climate awareness in the population - in policymakers as well as ordinary people - and it has the potential to wake a lot more people up to what we’re facing. Which is something that the world desperately needs, if we want to take climate action seriously.
4) No, 3°C of warming is not locked in, and it’s not the best-case scenario. Quote from the article: “On current trends the world is heading for 3C at best”. This is true - on current trends, by the end of the century.
This is without climate action. It’s not the “best case scenario” if we do the right thing. “Current trends” are not inevitable, and we can still limit warming to less than this if we take the right action.
Conclusions:
This article, and this report, are not intended to tell you that we’re doomed, or that it’s over, or that everything you read about here is inevitable. It’s a warning of an emergency, and it’s an important one.
It’s important not to react to every piece of bad climate news with resignation or doomism. “It’s over” doesn’t help anybody. It’s not helpful for you, or for the people around you, or for the many millions of people who are working to adapt their societies to climate change, or for the many millions of people who are already suffering and dying as a result of climate impacts. It’s not over for them, and it’s not over for us, or for the rest of nature either.
Think of the planet as though it’s a house on fire. If your house is on fire, and the fire alarm goes off, do you just ignore the alarm and sit there and watch it all burn?
I hope not.
I hope you would do everything you can to wake up everyone in your house and try to save everything and everyone that you can.
Thank you for reading this. I know it’s hard. Stay safe, stay sane, stay radical, and take care of yourselves.
