Our planet is changing... fast. Scientists have warned we have
fewer than 12 years to drastically cut our carbon emissions and pre-
vent catastrophic climate change. Globally, we’re on track to double
the amount of plastic we use each year by 2030 – much of it ending
up in our oceans. Mass extinctions of plant and animal species are
set to continue. While it is clear such events have a disastrous impact
on the wellbeing of our environment, we don’t often think about their
impact on the wellbeing of another living organism – us.
A day before I wrote this article, I spoke to a friend who’s working
on a motion to ask our local council to declare a climate emer-
gency. I asked her how she was doing, climate emergency aside. She
responded, “I don’t know how we can all be going around business
as usual. We’ve run out of time. I can’t switch off from this issue, and
I can’t deal with it either.”
Her sentiments echoed those I’d heard from family and friends and
seen online, particularly after the results of this year’s federal election.
Many have started to refer to this feeling of hopelessness and loss in
the face of climate change as eco anxiety, eco grief or eco depression.
Dr Susie Burke is very much acquainted with the concept of eco grief.
For the past 17 years, Susie has been working on community wellbeing
at the Australian Psychological Society, and for the past decade her
primary focus has been on the impact of climate change and natu-
ral disasters on our mental health. For people and communities on
the frontlines of climate change, exposure to climate- and weather-
related natural disasters can be completely debilitating to their well-
being. “The impacts that extreme weather-event disasters have on
mental health is the whole gamut of diagnosable mental health dis-
orders, such as depression and complicated grief and post-traumatic
stress disorder and other anxiety disorders,” Susie explains.
Most Australians living in urban areas, however, are not yet seeing
the impact of climate disasters firsthand – but we are still being
impacted by feelings of vicarious or existential grief. We watch and
we worry about the future we’re leaving the next generations, how
our brothers and sisters in nearby Pacific Islands will cope as sea lev-
els rise, and the fate of some of our most beloved natural icons, like
the Great Barrier Reef. “One of the things that people are increasingly
hearing and worrying about is that climate change threatens our very
existence,” says Susie. “That makes it an existential threat. It actually
changes all of the things we take for granted and how we all currently
live our lives. We need to respond to it, and we are not necessarily
responding to it yet.”
While eco anxiety is not a recognised illness or diagnosis at the
moment, it’s normal to feel somewhat frightened about what will
happen in the future if we don’t act quickly. The big question is then:
how do we deal with the weight of the climate emergency on our
shoulders?
In 2017, Susie wrote the Climate Change Empowerment Hand-
book – a guide featuring eight strategies that make up the acronym
‘activate’. E stands for ‘engage with nature’, and Susie believes this
is critical for dealing with eco grief effectively. “It’s so important to
engage with what you’re concerned about and what you’re trying to
protect,” she says. “Not only is it psychologically restorative to be out
in nature, but that’s the thing you’re caring deeply about. Go out and
spend time loving it.”
Connecting with the natural world falls under one of three broad
ways we can deal with feelings of eco anxiety and grief. The first is to
do something about it. This could be anything from political action
like lobbying government, right down to taking action individually
by planting your own veggies at home. “We often say action is the
antidote to despair, so all of those things can be powerful ways for
helping a person to feel less hopeless,” Susie advises.
The second is to do the opposite – instead of doing, stop. Media
coverage of the climate crisis has been escalating recently, to the
point where it’s almost impossible to ignore. In April 2019, the Brit-
ish media mentioned ‘climate change’ more times than it had done
so any month prior. The Guardian recently changed its terminology“
”
The big question is then: how do we
deal with the weight of the climate
emergency on our shoulders?