Published on 10/5/22
By Jess Gardner
A sixth mass extinction. Sea levels rise and droughts intensify. The drinking water is degraded and our homes are threatened by the increased frequency and power of natural disasters. As the chaos of climate change unfolds, many people are left feeling helpless.
“When I think about it and people talk about the more disastrous impacts and how certain things are very far gone. Everybody has to make a big change to make an impact, and corporations have to change everything. It feels like a weight where I don't know how to take this weight off,” Jumaris Hernandez, University of Delaware sophomore, said.
What Hernandez described is climate anxiety: distress that is caused by or related to the effects of climate change. Climate anxiety is not a diagnosable mental disorder because feeling anxious about the current state of the environment is a normal response to a dangerous threat. Climate change can have a negative impact on mental health, both directly and indirectly.
“Changes that are happening in the climate are either already causing something bad to happen in your life or the lives of people you care about very much, or it's going to. So it leads to this persistent worry and fear that things are not going to go well because of this. Whether that's not well in a job, whether that's not well in the economy, whether that's not well in your personal life, accessibility to food, or safety of a home,” Dr. Dana Veron, Director of the University of Delaware Climate Change Science and Policy Hub, said.
Climate Anxiety disproportionately affects younger populations since they will deal with the repercussions of climate change. A study published by The Lancet showed that 83% of people aged 16-25 from across the world agreed that people have failed to care for the planet. The ones who will inherit the world are the ones who are most worried about its current, degenerated state.
“I live on Cape Cod, and so that's in a very low-lying area. It's very likely that within the next 50 years parts of it that I grew up going to will no longer be present. That's one of the reasons that I became an environmental science major. I'm also minoring in energy and environmental policy, because I want to try and get stuff passed on the political end...at this point, we can't stop climate change but we can always limit it,” Owen Fournier, University of Delaware Junior, said.
Fournier’s climate anxiety about his home pushed him toward solving the issue. However, many people with climate anxiety are pushed in the opposite direction towards inaction because they feel the situation is hopeless. Others choose to be ignorant or adopt a nihilistic philosophy so that they can avoid the negative feelings that come with fully addressing the issue. Climate change poses an imminent threat to many people’s lives and that threat discourages them from thinking critically about it.
“I teach a course called 'Climate and Climate Change' and I used to just start right out with the facts of how the climate system works. What I found was that students would answer the questions in the class and engage in a dialogue about climate but it was pretty superficial ...I found that both their fear and their assumption that they understood the climate system really stopped any kind of learning. And so now in that class, which is a science class, we spend some time reading a fiction book, which is about non-human derived climate change...I think that opens the conversation up then to think about the climate future we're facing,” Dr. Veron said.
Having these conversations can help people to process their feelings and anxieties about climate change while confronting the realities of what’s happening in the environment. Talking about environmental issues can help people to realize that while the situation is bad, there is still hope.
“I think there are glimmers, you know, I don't think it's all Mad Max gloom and doom, but it's going to be an exciting and interesting 30 years of adaptation,” Dr. Greg Shriver, University of Delaware professor of wildlife ecology, said.
People can also cope with their uncertain feelings about the future by doing their part to make the world more sustainable right now. Making eco-friendly changes benefits the environment and gives people a sense of control. Simple things such as using less single-use plastics, eating less meat, and voting for politicians who support environmental policy make a difference. Taking action is how people use the unfortunate facts of the present to build a better future.
“Contrary to what the media says, every little thing that you do does help fight climate change. And looking at it, a lot of people think, 'What I'm gonna do, it won't matter because the big corporations are constantly just spilling more pollution into the air and into the water,' stuff like that. But, in order to actually fight climate change effectively, you're gonna have to deal with both a top-down and a bottom-up approach and meet somewhere in the middle,” said Fournier.