from ‘climate change’ to ‘climate crisis’ in order to communicate
the urgency of the issue to readers. Sydney has officially declared a
‘climate emergency’, as has the UK Government. If being constantly
bombarded by headlines leaves you overwhelmed and anxious, Susie
recommends switching off from the news and watching a movie or
reading a book. Swim in the ocean or visit your favourite national park.
Speak with someone you love and care about. These are all examples
of ‘emotion-focused coping’, and Susie says these are the “sorts of
things that can make you feel better about yourself and your focus”.
The third is to cultivate hope by thinking about all the people in
the world who share your concern, or the good politicians working
to create a better world. This allows us to develop a way of think-
ing about the problem that helps us to cope better with it. “We’ve
faced huge social and other threats before, and through persever-
ance, doggedness, determination and relentless action from people
we’ve been able to make tremendous changes that have improved
the world,” Susie reminds us.
Susie believes that eco anxiety can be a force for good. As people
become more aware of the distress they feel towards the state of
the environment, she hopes this discomfort will galvanise action and
“encourage people to get more vocal, get out there and demand more
change”. Author and climate activist Sarah Wilson agrees: “In some
ways, I think it’s got to get so bad that that’s when we’ll wake up.”
Sarah’s bestselling book First, We Make the Beast Beautiful explores
her relationship with anxiety. However, when it comes to mental
health challenges of the eco kind, Sarah believes we’re experiencing
something more profound. “Anxiety usually descends from some-
thing deep and existential within us; it’s very rarely a surface thing.
Anxiety is a representation of our yearning to know what life is all
about,” she says. “When that’s in question, of course that’s going
to trigger some deep, deep angst. I think it’s more of a forlornness,
rather than anxiety. Anxiety is a sort of nervousness, but this is
deeper than that.” Sarah explains that we are part of the planet, and
for many of us, our happiest moments are in nature: “There is a real
deep sense of grief for that disconnect because, at the heart of it, it’s
like losing a family member.”
When I speak to Sarah, it’s a few days after Australia’s federal elec-
tion. In the lead-up to the election, Sarah had been asking her audi-
ence to vote for the planet by choosing a party that would put cli-
mate action first. The Liberal Party was re-elected, and Sarah was
both devastated and stunned. Sarah believes that many of us are
feeling dismayed at the sense of apathy from members of society
who may not be engaged with the issue. “There is a huge segment of
society and a huge aspect of human nature that wants to consume
and spend and chew through natural resources. It’s a despair that
our other fellow humans aren’t listening to that deep spiritual con-
nection,” she tells me.
Few people feel more grief for the loss of the natural world than those
working to protect it. Dr Jenn Lavers is a research scientist at the Insti-
tute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, based at the University of Tas-
mania. Jenn’s work focuses predominantly on a deadly combination:
plastic and seabirds. When we speak, Jenn has just returned from a
research trip to the Cocos Keeling Islands, where the team found 414
million items of debris, a quarter of which were single-use plastic.
Jenn and her colleagues refer to experiencing ‘ecological PTSD’, and
she explains that they even suffer from ‘pre-TSD.’ “I get an immense
amount of anxiety in the weeks leading up to going places like Lord
Howe Island. I start to prepare myself in my head about what I might
witness this year, about how much worse it might be,” she says.
Jenn has been visiting Lord Howe Island, a magnificent destination
off the coast of New South Wales, for more than a decade. Once
home to a thriving population of seabirds, the impacts of plastic is
one reason the colony is declining rapidly. “I can recall in October
2007, being in that colony, and it being so raucous I couldn’t even
communicate with my colleague a few metres away because the
birds were just so loud. And now when I go there, it’s in comparison
almost deathly silent. For me, that is just heart-wrenching,” she says.
There’s a concept called ‘solastalgia’, which describes the feelings
of homesickness and sadness experienced when a place someone
lives or visits often begins to change around them rapidly – and
when Jenn speaks of Lord Howe Island, the longing and sadness in
her voice is palpable. “When I leave places like Lord Howe Island,
Henderson Island or Cocos Keeling Islands, I leave a changed person.
And it’s rarely changed for the better; although sometimes it gives
me the motivation to fight harder, mostly it breaks me.”“
”
There is a real deep
sense of grief for that
disconnect because, at
the heart of it, it’s like
losing a family member
ABOVE: SARAH WILSON, RIGHT: DR JENN LAVERS (all photos supplied)