Welcome to The Environmentalist, your column for understanding the natural world. Today we will explore an increasingly severe mental health problem related to the environment: climate anxiety.
When I check the weather, I don’t just dress for the heat of the summer, I prepare for what it means. Record-breaking temperatures, dying forests, another species gone. Is it normal to feel this worried all the time? Well, no. But it is a reflection of our current climate crisis.
Eco-anxiety or climate anxiety, is a constant worry about the effects of climate change, and even though it is not classified as a mental illness, the distress it causes can lead to illness. I think most of us are conscious about how serious climate change is and how its various complications can make us feel hopeless, but is that all there is to it?
A study by The Lancet discovered that 84 per cent of young people from the ages of 16 to 25 are moderately worried about climate change, while 59 per cent of the same demographic are extremely worried. This eco-anxiety manifests in our collective consciousness, for example the word “flygskam,” which means flight shame. It is a Swedish movement that turned the guilt that people feel when taking local or short flights due to their environmental impact, into more sustainable ways of transportation such as taking trains. In this case, we can see that some guilt can actually help us take action.
Let’s talk about carbon footprint. This is the measurement of the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused directly or indirectly by a single person. Daily activities such as driving your car may increase it, but so do things like using water to brush your teeth. Peculiar, don’t you think? During the 2000’s, oil and gas mega corp BP popularized the term as part of an approximately $100 million US dollars marketing campaign. By doing this, they shifted the responsibility for the damage they were causing onto the consumer. This led to the term being used in the same way for companies as it is for a single person.
Now we face a bigger issue; climate change is not our fault as individuals, but that also means we don’t have as much agency over it as we think we do. We shouldn’t take this as another reason to fall into despair and lose hope, but as a way to shift our focus from individually-based initiatives to community-based interventions.
Easier said than done, but don’t let your climate anxiety freeze you into inaction, or use it as an excuse to take three hour showers and leave the light on all night. Small actions have an impact even if it is minuscule compared to corporations. Actions such as volunteering, talking to our government representatives, and participating as a community can lead us into a better future, and the more the merrier. As the Lorax once said, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.” So, let’s care.
