Project Calm – July 2019

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Feeling overwhelmed by the planet’s ecological crisis? You’re not

alone. Tiffany Francis explores the roots of this newly defined

condition and how to stay hopeful.

Overcoming eco-anxiety

Cast your mind back to the heatwave of February 2019. Amidst

the suncream, ginger beer and ice lollies, was there a creeping

sense at the back of your mind that something wasn’t quite

right? Do you feel devastated when another species goes extinct,

or angry when politicians continue to subsidise fossil fuels?

If so, you may be suffering from eco-anxiety, a newly-coined

psychological disorder aff licting those with anxiety rooted in

the environmental crisis. With 1 in 10 British adults likely to

experience some form of anxiety in their lifetimes, eco-anxiety

is on the rise as the consequences of climate change continue to

change life on earth as we know it. So is eco-anxiety yet another

issue to deal with, or should we channel it as a force for good?

The nature of anxiety means that we are often excessively

worried about things we either cannot change, or are not

realistically ‘bad’ enough to warrant such worry. This is the

reason it can be so difficult to cope with – when the cause

is not rational, the solution is unclear. The difference with

eco-anxiety is that the cause is entirely justified, as author and

scientist Owen Gaffney explains in his book The Exponential

Climate Action Roadmap: “Eco-anxiety is the correct response

to the scale of the challenge.” The environmental crisis

is so important, that our response to it is entirely rational

and natural. Climate youth activist Greta Thunberg, who

started suffering from eco-based depression at 11 years old,

summarised it perfectly when she said: “Adults keep saying, we

owe it to the young people to give them hope. But I don’t want