SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
"There is overwhelming research that distress and anxiety relating to climate is on the rise." (Photo: Milamai/Getty Images)
The Best Medicine for My Climate Grief
A climate scientist talks to a psychologist about coping with the crushing stress related to climate change. Here’s what he learned
Aug 10, 2018
Sometimes a wave of climate grief breaks over me. It happens unexpectedly, perhaps during a book talk, or while on the phone with a congressional representative. In a millisecond, without warning, I'll feel my throat clench, my eyes sting, and my stomach drop as though the Earth below me is falling away. During these moments, I feel with excruciating clarity everything that we're losing--but also connection and love for those things.
Usually I don't mind the grief. It's clarifying. It makes sense to me, and inspires me to work harder than ever. Occasionally, however, I feel something quite different, a paralyzing sense of anxiety. This climate dread can last for days, even weeks. It can come with nightmares, for example, my favorite shady oak grove baking in the full sun of a heat wave, the oaks all dead and gone. During these periods, writing about climate change becomes all but impossible, as if hundreds of thoughts are jostling to squeeze through a narrow doorway onto the page. My scientific output slows to a trickle, as well; it feels like it just doesn't matter.
I sense a social barrier to talking about these emotions. If I bring up climate change in casual conversation, the topic is often met with awkward pauses and the polite introduction of new subjects. Aside from increasingly frequent articles in the news about the typically incremental and sometimes disastrous progression of climate breakdown, we seldom talk about it, face to face. It's as though the topic is impolite, even taboo.
With so much at stake--our security and normalcy; the futures we'd envisioned for our children; our sense of progress and where we fit in the universe; beloved places, species, and ecosystems--the psychology is going to be complex. So I reached out to Renee Lertzman to gain insight into how we're coping with such huge impending losses. Lertzman is a psychologist studying the effects of environmental loss on mental health and the author of Environmental Melancholia: Psychoanalytic Dimensions of Engagement.
"There is overwhelming research that distress and anxiety relating to climate is on the rise," she told me. "Many people, I'd argue, are experiencing what I'd call a 'latent' form of climate anxiety or dread, in that they may not be talking about it much but they are feeling it."
If we're feeling these emotions or if we know others who are, it would be helpful to talk about them. "The main thing is that we find ways to talk about what we are experiencing in a safe and nonjudgmental context, and to be open to listening. All too often, when anxiety or fear comes up, we all want to push it away and move into 'solutions.'"
A 2017 report by the American Psychological Association found that climate change is causing stress, anxiety, depression, and relationship strain. The psychological weight of climate change can lead to feelings of helplessness and fear, and to climate disengagement. Not surprisingly, those directly impacted by climate-augmented disasters fare even worse: For example, after Hurricane Katrina, suicide in affected areas more than doubled; the situation in post-Maria Puerto Rico is similarly dire. In general, suicide is projected to rise dramatically due to climate change; in addition to the psychological toll, our brains don't respond well physically to excessive heat.
To think daily about climate change and any of its dire implications can be a crushing psychological burden. Each of us is just one mammal, with all our mammalian limitations--we get tired, sad, irritated, sick, overwhelmed--and the climate crisis wields the force of 8 billion humans with infrastructure, corporations, capital, politics, and imaginations heavily invested in burning fossil fuel.
"It's important to remember that inaction is rarely about a lack of concern or care, but is so much more complex," Lertzman said. "Namely, that we westerners are living in a society that is still deeply entrenched in the very practices we now know are damaging and destructive. This creates a very specific kind of situation--what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. Unless we know how to work with this dissonance, we will continue to come up against resistance, inaction, and reactivity."
I've been working through my own climate dissonance since 2006, back when the atmospheric carbon concentration was just 380 parts per million. That year I reached a tipping point in my own awareness of what was happening and what it meant. It was challenging to carry that knowledge when no one close to me seemed to care. But, said Lertzman, "we need to be careful not to make assumptions about other people's relationships with these issues. Even if people may not be showing it, research shows again and again that it's still on their minds and a source of discomfort or distress." If she's right, maybe the sea change in public action we desperately need is closer than it seems. It would certainly be helpful if we could talk openly about how climate change is making us feel.
Modern climate change is completely different: It's 100 percent human-caused.
Things do feel somewhat different now, both because more people are calling for action than in 2006 and also because I'm now part of communities with people who are as concerned as I am (for example, my local chapter of Citizens' Climate Lobby). There are more people in my life talking openly about climate change. And that helps.
Another way I cope is by simply burning less fossil fuel. This eliminates internal cognitive dissonance by aligning my actions with my knowledge. It also brings some great fringe benefits, such as more exercise from biking, healthier eating through vegetarianism, more connection to the land through gardening, and more connection to my community through activism and public outreach.
Finally, I actively work to be hope-oriented. In the film Melancholia, about a mysterious planet on a collision course with Earth, the protagonist passively accepts, even embraces, apocalypse. Nothing can stop it; ecological annihilation is inevitable.
Modern climate change is completely different: It's 100 percent human-caused, so it's 100 percent human-solvable. If humans pulled together as if our lives depended on it, we could leave fossil fuel in a matter of years. This would require radical change across global society, and I'm not suggesting it will happen. But it could, and this possibility leaves open a middle path, something between sweeping climate action and an unavoidable planetary collision--a rapid cultural shift, one that we all can contribute to through our conversations and our daily actions. And that's a very hopeful thing.
If you're having suicidal thoughts, or know someone who is, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK).
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
This article was written for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Peter Kalmus
Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (speaking on his own behalf). He lives in suburban Los Angeles on one-tenth the fossil fuel of the average American. His book is "Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution" (2017).
Sometimes a wave of climate grief breaks over me. It happens unexpectedly, perhaps during a book talk, or while on the phone with a congressional representative. In a millisecond, without warning, I'll feel my throat clench, my eyes sting, and my stomach drop as though the Earth below me is falling away. During these moments, I feel with excruciating clarity everything that we're losing--but also connection and love for those things.
Usually I don't mind the grief. It's clarifying. It makes sense to me, and inspires me to work harder than ever. Occasionally, however, I feel something quite different, a paralyzing sense of anxiety. This climate dread can last for days, even weeks. It can come with nightmares, for example, my favorite shady oak grove baking in the full sun of a heat wave, the oaks all dead and gone. During these periods, writing about climate change becomes all but impossible, as if hundreds of thoughts are jostling to squeeze through a narrow doorway onto the page. My scientific output slows to a trickle, as well; it feels like it just doesn't matter.
I sense a social barrier to talking about these emotions. If I bring up climate change in casual conversation, the topic is often met with awkward pauses and the polite introduction of new subjects. Aside from increasingly frequent articles in the news about the typically incremental and sometimes disastrous progression of climate breakdown, we seldom talk about it, face to face. It's as though the topic is impolite, even taboo.
With so much at stake--our security and normalcy; the futures we'd envisioned for our children; our sense of progress and where we fit in the universe; beloved places, species, and ecosystems--the psychology is going to be complex. So I reached out to Renee Lertzman to gain insight into how we're coping with such huge impending losses. Lertzman is a psychologist studying the effects of environmental loss on mental health and the author of Environmental Melancholia: Psychoanalytic Dimensions of Engagement.
"There is overwhelming research that distress and anxiety relating to climate is on the rise," she told me. "Many people, I'd argue, are experiencing what I'd call a 'latent' form of climate anxiety or dread, in that they may not be talking about it much but they are feeling it."
If we're feeling these emotions or if we know others who are, it would be helpful to talk about them. "The main thing is that we find ways to talk about what we are experiencing in a safe and nonjudgmental context, and to be open to listening. All too often, when anxiety or fear comes up, we all want to push it away and move into 'solutions.'"
A 2017 report by the American Psychological Association found that climate change is causing stress, anxiety, depression, and relationship strain. The psychological weight of climate change can lead to feelings of helplessness and fear, and to climate disengagement. Not surprisingly, those directly impacted by climate-augmented disasters fare even worse: For example, after Hurricane Katrina, suicide in affected areas more than doubled; the situation in post-Maria Puerto Rico is similarly dire. In general, suicide is projected to rise dramatically due to climate change; in addition to the psychological toll, our brains don't respond well physically to excessive heat.
To think daily about climate change and any of its dire implications can be a crushing psychological burden. Each of us is just one mammal, with all our mammalian limitations--we get tired, sad, irritated, sick, overwhelmed--and the climate crisis wields the force of 8 billion humans with infrastructure, corporations, capital, politics, and imaginations heavily invested in burning fossil fuel.
"It's important to remember that inaction is rarely about a lack of concern or care, but is so much more complex," Lertzman said. "Namely, that we westerners are living in a society that is still deeply entrenched in the very practices we now know are damaging and destructive. This creates a very specific kind of situation--what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. Unless we know how to work with this dissonance, we will continue to come up against resistance, inaction, and reactivity."
I've been working through my own climate dissonance since 2006, back when the atmospheric carbon concentration was just 380 parts per million. That year I reached a tipping point in my own awareness of what was happening and what it meant. It was challenging to carry that knowledge when no one close to me seemed to care. But, said Lertzman, "we need to be careful not to make assumptions about other people's relationships with these issues. Even if people may not be showing it, research shows again and again that it's still on their minds and a source of discomfort or distress." If she's right, maybe the sea change in public action we desperately need is closer than it seems. It would certainly be helpful if we could talk openly about how climate change is making us feel.
Modern climate change is completely different: It's 100 percent human-caused.
Things do feel somewhat different now, both because more people are calling for action than in 2006 and also because I'm now part of communities with people who are as concerned as I am (for example, my local chapter of Citizens' Climate Lobby). There are more people in my life talking openly about climate change. And that helps.
Another way I cope is by simply burning less fossil fuel. This eliminates internal cognitive dissonance by aligning my actions with my knowledge. It also brings some great fringe benefits, such as more exercise from biking, healthier eating through vegetarianism, more connection to the land through gardening, and more connection to my community through activism and public outreach.
Finally, I actively work to be hope-oriented. In the film Melancholia, about a mysterious planet on a collision course with Earth, the protagonist passively accepts, even embraces, apocalypse. Nothing can stop it; ecological annihilation is inevitable.
Modern climate change is completely different: It's 100 percent human-caused, so it's 100 percent human-solvable. If humans pulled together as if our lives depended on it, we could leave fossil fuel in a matter of years. This would require radical change across global society, and I'm not suggesting it will happen. But it could, and this possibility leaves open a middle path, something between sweeping climate action and an unavoidable planetary collision--a rapid cultural shift, one that we all can contribute to through our conversations and our daily actions. And that's a very hopeful thing.
If you're having suicidal thoughts, or know someone who is, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK).
Peter Kalmus
Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (speaking on his own behalf). He lives in suburban Los Angeles on one-tenth the fossil fuel of the average American. His book is "Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution" (2017).
Sometimes a wave of climate grief breaks over me. It happens unexpectedly, perhaps during a book talk, or while on the phone with a congressional representative. In a millisecond, without warning, I'll feel my throat clench, my eyes sting, and my stomach drop as though the Earth below me is falling away. During these moments, I feel with excruciating clarity everything that we're losing--but also connection and love for those things.
Usually I don't mind the grief. It's clarifying. It makes sense to me, and inspires me to work harder than ever. Occasionally, however, I feel something quite different, a paralyzing sense of anxiety. This climate dread can last for days, even weeks. It can come with nightmares, for example, my favorite shady oak grove baking in the full sun of a heat wave, the oaks all dead and gone. During these periods, writing about climate change becomes all but impossible, as if hundreds of thoughts are jostling to squeeze through a narrow doorway onto the page. My scientific output slows to a trickle, as well; it feels like it just doesn't matter.
I sense a social barrier to talking about these emotions. If I bring up climate change in casual conversation, the topic is often met with awkward pauses and the polite introduction of new subjects. Aside from increasingly frequent articles in the news about the typically incremental and sometimes disastrous progression of climate breakdown, we seldom talk about it, face to face. It's as though the topic is impolite, even taboo.
With so much at stake--our security and normalcy; the futures we'd envisioned for our children; our sense of progress and where we fit in the universe; beloved places, species, and ecosystems--the psychology is going to be complex. So I reached out to Renee Lertzman to gain insight into how we're coping with such huge impending losses. Lertzman is a psychologist studying the effects of environmental loss on mental health and the author of Environmental Melancholia: Psychoanalytic Dimensions of Engagement.
"There is overwhelming research that distress and anxiety relating to climate is on the rise," she told me. "Many people, I'd argue, are experiencing what I'd call a 'latent' form of climate anxiety or dread, in that they may not be talking about it much but they are feeling it."
If we're feeling these emotions or if we know others who are, it would be helpful to talk about them. "The main thing is that we find ways to talk about what we are experiencing in a safe and nonjudgmental context, and to be open to listening. All too often, when anxiety or fear comes up, we all want to push it away and move into 'solutions.'"
A 2017 report by the American Psychological Association found that climate change is causing stress, anxiety, depression, and relationship strain. The psychological weight of climate change can lead to feelings of helplessness and fear, and to climate disengagement. Not surprisingly, those directly impacted by climate-augmented disasters fare even worse: For example, after Hurricane Katrina, suicide in affected areas more than doubled; the situation in post-Maria Puerto Rico is similarly dire. In general, suicide is projected to rise dramatically due to climate change; in addition to the psychological toll, our brains don't respond well physically to excessive heat.
To think daily about climate change and any of its dire implications can be a crushing psychological burden. Each of us is just one mammal, with all our mammalian limitations--we get tired, sad, irritated, sick, overwhelmed--and the climate crisis wields the force of 8 billion humans with infrastructure, corporations, capital, politics, and imaginations heavily invested in burning fossil fuel.
"It's important to remember that inaction is rarely about a lack of concern or care, but is so much more complex," Lertzman said. "Namely, that we westerners are living in a society that is still deeply entrenched in the very practices we now know are damaging and destructive. This creates a very specific kind of situation--what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. Unless we know how to work with this dissonance, we will continue to come up against resistance, inaction, and reactivity."
I've been working through my own climate dissonance since 2006, back when the atmospheric carbon concentration was just 380 parts per million. That year I reached a tipping point in my own awareness of what was happening and what it meant. It was challenging to carry that knowledge when no one close to me seemed to care. But, said Lertzman, "we need to be careful not to make assumptions about other people's relationships with these issues. Even if people may not be showing it, research shows again and again that it's still on their minds and a source of discomfort or distress." If she's right, maybe the sea change in public action we desperately need is closer than it seems. It would certainly be helpful if we could talk openly about how climate change is making us feel.
Modern climate change is completely different: It's 100 percent human-caused.
Things do feel somewhat different now, both because more people are calling for action than in 2006 and also because I'm now part of communities with people who are as concerned as I am (for example, my local chapter of Citizens' Climate Lobby). There are more people in my life talking openly about climate change. And that helps.
Another way I cope is by simply burning less fossil fuel. This eliminates internal cognitive dissonance by aligning my actions with my knowledge. It also brings some great fringe benefits, such as more exercise from biking, healthier eating through vegetarianism, more connection to the land through gardening, and more connection to my community through activism and public outreach.
Finally, I actively work to be hope-oriented. In the film Melancholia, about a mysterious planet on a collision course with Earth, the protagonist passively accepts, even embraces, apocalypse. Nothing can stop it; ecological annihilation is inevitable.
Modern climate change is completely different: It's 100 percent human-caused, so it's 100 percent human-solvable. If humans pulled together as if our lives depended on it, we could leave fossil fuel in a matter of years. This would require radical change across global society, and I'm not suggesting it will happen. But it could, and this possibility leaves open a middle path, something between sweeping climate action and an unavoidable planetary collision--a rapid cultural shift, one that we all can contribute to through our conversations and our daily actions. And that's a very hopeful thing.
If you're having suicidal thoughts, or know someone who is, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK).
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.