Climate Watch: Climate anxiety is real - Evanston RoundTable

Climate Watch: Climate anxiety is real - Evanston RoundTable

If you’ve been feeling anxious about climate change, you are not alone. Mental health clinicians are seeing more patients with symptoms of climate change anxiety – also referred to as eco-anxiety, eco-grief or climate doom. What is it, and what can we do about it?

For some young Evanstonians, the answer lies in action. E-Town Sunrise, a chapter of a national movement to put an end to the climate crisis, works to change policies at the local level. On Sunday, they will join with other Evanstonians to sponsor the first Climate Hope event. (Details below.)
E-Town Sunrise Instagram

Why worry?

Worries about climate change“are rational and evidence-based,” clinical social worker Rebecca Weston told the New York Times recently. What once seemed far in the future is coming closer. As the 2022 UN International Panel on Climate Change report projects: “At current levels of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere, many parts of the planet will become unlivable in the next few decades. … There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.”

Reminders come frequently in news of surging seas and raging wildfires. “Extreme weather events and other natural disasters associated with climate change have resulted in increased levels of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, and domestic violence,” according to Susan Clayton, conservation psychologist at Wooster College in Ohio.

It’s not only young people who worry about climate change. Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, has surveyed Americans on their level of concern about the risks posed by global warming for over 20 years. He has found that a substantial number of people now say they are unable to stop worrying. In a recent national survey, 10 percent of Americans reported feeling nervous, anxious or on edge about global warming at least several days per week. Nine percent reported being unable to stop or control worry about global warming, and 7 percent said they had experienced diminished interest or pleasure in doing things because of global warming.

Symptoms of climate anxiety may be “intrusive thoughts or feelings of distress about future disasters or the long-term future of human existence and the world, including one’s own descendants,” according to Sarah Lowe of the Yale School of Public Health. “There is a physiological component that would include heart racing and shortness of breath, and a behavioral component: when climate anxiety gets in the way of one’s social relationships or functioning at work or school.”

At the same time, as Clayton writes, “emotions are important not only to wellbeing, but also to action. Without grief and anxiety, we will not be motivated to change.” And while anxiety about climate change can be paralyzing, researchers have noted a stronger link to depression in those who are not engaged in group activities to address global warming.

“Fear and anger has become almost empowering”

Feelings of paralysis and avoidance are not uncommon at ETHS. After all, climate change is hard to comprehend and even harder to act against as one teenager in one suburb of one city of one state.

Senior Libby Greer, another member of E-Town Sunrise, says, “If I think too much about it or if we are watching a documentary in class about the Arctic and sea levels rising, I get very emotional. But I know that my impulse and a lot of people’s impulses in those situations where it gets paralyzing is to just stop thinking about it, and that’s why nothing gets done. I’ve been able to compartmentalize that emotion where I can be like, sure it’s horrible, but there’s still stuff to be done.”

By joining E-Town Sunrise, Greer has been part of the push for climate change to be part of the curriculum in mandatory freshman biology and sophomore civics classes. Freshman Cheyloe Anthony supports this change. “Over just learning about greenhouse gasses and the facts of climate change,” she says, “I feel we students are less informed about how significant and how scary it really is.” Anthony adds that she, too, feels both scared and eager to take action, especially with a focus on environmental racism: “I definitely want to help with the social aspect of it.”

E-Town Sunrise also is close to passing an ETHS sustainability policy with long-term goals on waste reduction and emissions. Two years ago, the group advocated for an ETHS sustainability coordinator and a climate emergency declaration by the City of Evanston, both of which were successful.

“I think I feel the same way that most of our generation does,” Greer says, “really existentially terrified and scared. But I also feel like finding ways to be active, getting engaged with Sunrise specifically, that fear and anger has become almost empowering in a way. It’s hard to find hope and be satisfied with your work on climate change because it feels so big and so unavoidable, but being able to have little successes, like with the (ETHS) sustainability policy, and have something tangible to look at makes that fear a little less awful.”

But, Greer says, when you’re overwhelmed, “There’s no harm [in] taking a break.”

“Hope allows us to envision a future”

According to conservation psychologist Susan Clayton, hopelessness “lets us off the hook by saying that action and behavioral change are pointless. Hope allows us to envision a future in which people and societies can continue, thrive, and even experience positive transformation.”

How are you feeling about climate change these days? If you’re curious, anxious or unsure, come find inspiration at Evanston’s first Climate Hope event. And for other ways to cope with climate anxiety, check out these tips.

The E-Town Sunrise Climate Hope event is on Sunday, October 29, 2 to 4 PM at the Arrington Lagoon shelter house. This all-ages event will have art, music, games and more. Do you have climate art you want to contribute? We welcome your images, songs and poems to our open mic, and share eco actions. All people can participate. Let’s come together and create climate community together!