Emotional Effects of Climate Change
“I feel nervous. I get worried and anxious, but also a little curious. The curiosity is a strange, paradoxical feeling that I sometimes feel guilty about. After all, this is the future of the people I love.” - Dr. Ailie Gallant
The quote brings up an important point concerning how we feel about climate change. It shows that climate change has an affect on us at the emotional and psychological level. Adverse psychological and emotional responses to climate change are racking up a repertoire of names: “Climate Depression,” “Climate Change Delusion,” “Climate Trauma,” “Pre-traumatic Stress Disorder,” “Solastalgia” and “Ecological Anxiety Disorder,” to name a few. The physical health impacts expected (and manifest) ofclimate change are well documented. Less well-known are the impacts that the problem will have on our psychological well-being.
Humans have lived through climate change before. Throughout pre-historic times our species faced threats to our existence as populations battled to adapt to dramatically changing climatic conditions (mostly due to advancing and receding ice ages). It has even been suggested that these fluctuating climatic conditions propelled human evolution. We will never know how those early minds experienced climate change. What we do know is that they adapted themselves accordingly and survived. However, as our world departs from the Holocene (the current geological epoch that has been characterised by relative climate stability), we face conditions arguably more testing than those of our ancestors: the world’s population is exponentially bigger, largely dependant on the climate-sensitive crops, and water and other natural resources are much depleted. It seems we are more vulnerable than ever. How will people cope emotionally with the losses of livelihoods and homes, dislocation and conflict that climate change heralds? Already documented are depression, suicide, anxiety and general emotional distress. Furthermore, inaction on climate change has all been linked to the toll it takes on the human psyche.
The Yale project on climate change communication recently published a paper entitled “The Role of Emotion in Global Warming Policy Support and Opposition.” They found that emotions of fear, anger, worry and guilt were “stronger predictors of global warming policy support than cultural world views” and that 50% of variance in public support for global warming policies could be explained by emotional measures alone. A paper by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) argues that how we feel affects how, and whether we act, on climate change. Climate change, the WWF says, threatens not just our existence but our self-esteem, integrity of our identity and capacity to function normally mentally.
It is not just those who are geographically vulnerable to climate change that experience psychological distress. The US-based researchers Paul Robbin and Sarah Moore move the focus to how scientists working at the forefront of ecological crisis are dealing with the implications of their research. Robbins and Moore found that that in some sciences, the observation of rapid ecological change and its implications are effecting not just personal emotions but how science is communicated. We need to take the emotional implications of climate change for scientists seriously when we read that Camille Parmesan, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace with Al Gore because of her work as a lead author with the IPCC, said that she has contemplated leaving the field of climate change research because it has made her “professionally depressed.”
My point and what I want people to better understand is that climate change affects more than just the environments that we live in. It can take a serious toll on our emotional health and well-being. It shows that we need to be more aware and more proactive in our efforts to battle it.