The case for climate action (especially when the future is uncertain):

I’ve struggled with anxiety my entire life. I worried about small things like washing my hands enough and doing well in school, but I also stressed about big things like tornadoes, acidic oceans, and my elephant friends. As a kid, I would have nightmares about going to war over water. I would imagine my best friends living underfed in some dust-covered city and wonder what life would become once our beautiful Earth had been stripped of its beauty and resources. At age 9 I thought I just had a heightened imagination, but unlike childhood nightmares, the solution to our climate change reality isn’t as simple as looking for monsters or drinking warm milk. It’s now common knowledge that a staggering majority of people all over the globe are fighting off similar “climate” demons. A study in the UK found 40% of people aged 14–24 feel “completely overwhelmed by climate change”. Climate anxiety is so widespread that it’s been given a name and a diagnosis; Solastalgia: “the emotional and existential distress caused by massive global environmental change”.

Ironically, climate anxiety is symptomatically in-distinguishable from other types of anxiety: lack of motivation, a strong urge to grasp onto what can be controlled, over-thinking, physical symptoms ranging anywhere from headaches to ulcers, and of course all with a deep sense of existential dread. So, why should the solutions evade so many of us? Climate change is many things, but it is not a problem without proposed solutions. We are bombarded by constant remedies: fly less, drive less, eat a more climate-conscious diet, protect the remaining natural spaces where you live, practice conscious consumption and reduce your waste stream, reduce reliance on heat and air conditioning, vote in legislators who believe in global warming and science, and finally-be prepared to explain, in great detail, all the fears keeping you awake at night, to your friends, parents, and the therapist you met online.

Akin to other kinds of anxiety, Solastalgia has “jump to action” relief. The more we do to combat our source of discomfort the greater our ability to sink back into our blissfully ignorant existence. Each intentional action we take to assuage our discomfort is an anecdote about the power of consistent collective micro-steps. Every action adds up. It’s simple math. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Any kind of action is a solution.

Do something.

Anything.

Don’t just lie there.

Our planet and our society are hurtling towards catastrophe, and our inability to act because we fear the “wrong” action, is the simplest way to guarantee the fate we fear most.

Yet, this self-endowed superpower doesn’t leave most of us feeling like we can solve the problem. If it’s not the “best” or most “correct” thing, does it even count? The uncertainty of our own activism drives us into in-action. Disempowerment doesn’t seem to do justice to the pit of coined “Greta guilt” writhing in my stomach. We detest this because it reminds us that we are, and to some extent as a necessity, constantly failing before we learn and improve. If the baseline theory of Solastalgia teaches us anything, it’s that this immense guilt we feel is valid but also necessary. The anxiety and fear we deal with is a result of centuries of negligence, greed, destruction, and short-sightedness. Our failures to protect the planet have spelled out the symptoms of our climate emergency long before now. The knowledge we’ve never managed to translate because as long as we had the power to legitimize our plunder of mother earth, there were always enough excuses to rationalize and look the other direction. When we see images of koala’s burning, children standing in the seas watching their homes turn to ashes, and the sky turn a vengeful shade of red; it’s like looking in the eye of a dying animal. We all want to look away; it’s hot and uncomfortable and it would be much easier to pretend it isn’t happening. Each of us wants to downplay our role and believe simply because we don’t want tigers to go extinct, or the Amazon to disappear, we’re somehow less culpable for the daily damage inflicted upon our ecosystems. Yet, not facing reality is no cure to anxiety, and I don’t need to be a psychologist to tell you that blissful ignorance will only take you so far. Our clock has struck midnight and time is up. We no longer have the luxury of looking away. It is no longer enough to rationalize or ignore. Without turning pain into purpose and anxiety into action we will not survive.

So, why resist action when our house is on fire? Simple: we can’t act unless we come to terms with our role in our own psychological trauma.

“The emotional and psychological toll of the fires on humans has been enormous and many are still coming to terms with their raw personal reactions. So too are the mental health professionals who deal with the emotions and feelings people are experiencing. There are the standard diagnostic categories that apply to people who experience trauma and loss, but over and above that, there are new, uneasy feelings connected to a malevolent cause. Nobody knows what to do.” (Read it in its entirety here.)-Glenn Albrecht

There are generally two kinds of people when it comes to climate anxiety. We all know the “out of sight, out of mind” type. Sure, the glaciers are melting, but that’s in Iceland, I barely know where that is on a map. That’s camp A. That kind of approach is arguably how we arrived here at “platform panic”. For people in the “B” group, the idea of people in the “A” group is terrifying. My life and welfare of my children rest in the hands of people who would rather turn a blind eye? No thank you. Those of us in group B continue to worry as the climate emergency hurtles toward us, and group A; blissfully powerless, would rather pretend it isn’t happening in order to avoid feelings of helplessness and grief. Let me be clear, there’s no benefit to being in group B. It’s two extremes that result in a giant pile of in-action, negativity, and finger-pointing. You can’t beat climate change by claiming your “inaction” was better than that of your colleagues on the other team. What we are struggling to realize is whether we like it or not, climate change is happening to all of us. If Earth’s climate were a survival reality show, we would all be losing. Moral superiority won’t help us when our cities are underwater.

So, where do we go from here? How can we escape the mindset of extremism? One answer: stop looking at other people for your answers. Just do something. I don’t mean go tie yourself to a tree (unless you want to!). I mean turn the constant gnawing in your gut into some form of positive, constructive action. We must collectively avoid paralysis through analysis. As long as we continue to sit and absorb the endless flood of bad news, over time, it will inevitably create a conglomerate of more anxiety and numbness. Hope will become a point lost in memory, only a faded blueprint of what could have been, what you could have done. Remember-and here’s the key-there are no wrong actions.

Read that again.

There are no wrong actions.

Nothing you intentionally do today will end the climate crisis but it can break the cycle. Whether you minimize your air travel or have one less hamburger a week, doing what’s possible today is how long term cultural shifts are created. Habits are simply the repetition of small, consistent actions, but when those moments are constantly compounding on one another, change is invariably created. When the IPCC says we have 12 years to reverse the impending doom hurtling towards us, our gut instinct may be to run, hide under the proverbial bed and stay lost in the world of what is easy versus what is right. However, twelve years is roughly 105,120 hours. So stop watching the clock tick forward, you have time to do something. Technically, you have over 4,400 days from right now. If you start today, or even tomorrow, that can be a marathon worth of compounded actions. Don’t try to be perfect; perfection is not a requirement for catalyzing change. Even if you chuck your phone in the ocean, never fly or drive again and go cold turkey vegan, no one is perfect. Luckily, climate change doesn’t require perfection, it only asks for shameless experimentation.