Climate Anxiety - who feels it and what can we do?

Having read some articles and listened to a Climate Alarm Clock podcast episode recently which touched on climate anxiety, I thought it would be interesting to explore for myself how this impacts me, and how it has evolved over my years of working in the area, both as a volunteer and professionally.

Firstly, the descriptor ‘climate anxiety’ seems to me to be not nearly adequate enough to describe the real sense of existential dread that I have been feeling in the last while.  And it was both reassuring but also sad to hear that others are experiencing similar feelings.

For me, over the years, worries about the state of our climate have been a see saw of ups and downs.  They would burst into full technicolour at times of extreme weather events, or at times when climate reports were issued.  And then they would settle into the background again, and some equilibrium would be restored.  But ultimately, focusing on action and positive efforts to address all the issues kept the overall impact on me to a minimum.

However this has changed over the recent past and probably has been evolving over time, the more I learn and observe.

For context, climate change is both my passion and my job, as well as my academic qualification.  It is something that I feel needs to be addressed at an individual level by all of us playing a part, but it is also part of my job to keep up to date on climate reports and events and to interact with a lot of different areas around climate.  Anyone who has read the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report or summary, as well as the multitude of other reports and research that have come out in the last year, can only feel a sense of despair. Below are some of the stark observations from the IPCC report:

It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.

Approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change.

Climate change has caused substantial damages, and increasingly irreversible losses, in terrestrial, freshwater, cryospheric, and coastal and open ocean ecosystems (high confidence). Hundreds of local losses of species have been driven by increases in the magnitude of heat extremes (high confidence) with mass mortality events recorded on land and in the ocean (very high confidence).

Climate change has reduced food security and affected water security, hindering efforts to meet Sustainable Development Goals (high confidence).

Key barriers to adaptation are limited resources, lack of private sector and citizen engagement, insufficient mobilization of finance (including for research), low climate literacy, lack of political commitment, limited research and/or slow and low uptake of adaptation science, and low sense of urgency.

With further warming, climate change risks will become increasingly complex and more difficult to manage. Multiple climatic and non-climatic risk drivers will interact, resulting in compounding overall risk and risks cascading across sectors and regions.

All of the above are pretty terrifying and in tandem with real life extreme weather events which have unfolded this year, such as flooding, extreme heat, fires and the concern about the potential collapse of the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), it is hard not to feel a sense of doom. This sense of doom, rather than being unreasonable or an overreaction, is in fact a completely understandable feeling.  It is not an individual failing or manifestation but rather a human survival response to potential catastrophe.  From Dodds (2021).   “As Lawton writes, if ecoanxiety is treated as pathology, ‘the forces of denial will have won…what we are witnessing isn't a tsunami of mental illness, but a long-overdue outbreak of sanity’.”

I personally feel that we need to hone in on this ‘outbreak of sanity’, acknowledge our grief and prepare for a different type of world.

Adams (2020) says that ‘Acknowledging loss collectively and publicly is an important step in facing up to the reality of the Anthropocene and the impossibility of carrying on ‘as normal’.’

Unfortunately this acceptance of loss is not spread evenly across humanity and the burden seems to be falling disproportionately on those who have long advocated for action and change (and of course, in real terms, the actual physical and societal impacts are not felt equally across the globe so many are already suffering deeply whilst having little to no voice).   What I have observed on social media is that those who are knowledgeable and vocal in climate discourses are increasingly feeling deep despair and incredulity at the inaction and the poor media narratives.  This has been made worse, I sense, by the increasing social media activity of those who are pushing a climate denial agenda (whether purposefully or because they have been duped by powerful vested interests).

So it feels at times, that the gap between different strands of believers and non-believers is widening all the time, with an increasingly dystopian feel as we walk headlong into the runaway train that is climate change.  I’ve been interested in the psychology of climate change for quite some time, and intrigued by the different behavioural responses to various scenarios.  One of the key narratives around engaging people has been to avoid doomism and retain a positive message.  However, I believe that this perspective is changing somewhat, with an increased acceptance that perhaps we need to be more real and more vocal about the substantial risk to our future humanity.

I suppose that for me, seeing so many passionate activists in this area, and so much work done for so long, with what certainly feels like minimal impact, has been very discouraging and has certainly contributed to the level of climate anxiety I feel.  I personally know many people who are utterly unaware of the consequences of climate change and it’s hard not to admit that those of us who do care, have been in a large echo chamber for quite some time.

Below is a chart (very non-scientific I must stress!) of categories of people, based on my own experiences over the years, as well as observation of social media discourses.  My idea in creating this chart is simply to show that a ‘one size all’ approach does not work in any kind of climate education or discourse and I feel that this is part of the problem with engaging people.  It also shows, I believe, that although climate change consequences affect all of us, it is only certain groupings who are likely to experience the associated anxiety and worry.

Category	Description	Approach
Deniers	Active climate deniers who try to disseminate delay and denial messages.	It is pointless engaging with climate deniers at this point, it takes up energy that can be better spent elsewhere.
Non-believers	Those who are uninterested, and see it as an area which doesn’t impact them.	Some conversation is possible, but hard to know how effective it is if the level of interest is minimal.
Concerned on a small scale	Those who believe in climate change but focus on small issues like reducing plastic, sometimes at the expense of the bigger picture.	There is a lot of potential to have conversations with this group and to create wider topics of discussion.
Believers but unsure what to do	Concerned about climate change but unsure how to tackle it, or believing that it’s the job of others to fix.	Again, a very positive grouping because if solutions or actions are offered, they may well engage further.
Experts in sub-categories	There is valuable knowledge and advocacy in this grouping but sometimes a disconnect from the larger societal impacts.  E.g. someone who focuses on biodiversity for example but doesn’t consider the role of fossil fuel companies.	Two approaches are possible – no one can tackle everything and we need all the specialties so it works for certain people to just focus on their own area.  The second possibility is to have further conversations and connect the themes a bit more and contextualise where particular topics lie in the big picture.

There are many suggested solutions for eco anxiety which are shown below:

• Take action – join a group, donate, petition online, etc.
• Talk to friends
• Spend time outside in nature
• Switch off from media
• Focus on your immediate life, home, friends etc.

I would add that when the anxiety is a reasonable response to world events, sitting with the real grief is necessary.  It’s probably also important to let go of some of the internal sense of responsibility – not in the sense of giving up on climate action, but rather just acknowledging to yourself that you cannot control a lot of what is happening.  Also, connecting with people who understand how you feel can be very beneficial.  Regardless of how you respond individually, it is likely that the term climate/eco anxiety will evolve as climate impacts inevitably get worse and affect more and more of us.

Adams, M. (2020) Coming Back Down To Earth: Exploring Distress, Loss And Grief In The Anthropocene - Mad In The UK, Mad In The UK. Available at: https://www.madintheuk.com/2020/08/distress-loss-grief-in-the-anthropocene/ (Accessed: 4 August 2023).

Dodds, J. (2021) ‘The psychology of climate anxiety’, BJPsych Bull, 45(4), pp. 222–226. doi: 10.1192/bjb.2021.18.

Jarrousse, S. (2023) Paralysis Or Solution, How “climate Anxiety” Determines Our Reaction To Global Warming - SKEMA ThinkForward, SKEMA ThinkForward. Available at: https://knowledge.skema.edu/climate-anxiety-global-warming-reaction/ (Accessed: 4 August 2023).