This week, I’m describing emotions that are specific to the ecological crisis of climate change that’s become a clear, present reality all over the globe. The emotional impact of climate change has become such a widespread problem that a new organization, the Climate Psychiatry Alliance, has developed to deal with the problem.
Yesterday, I wrote of solastalgia, the pained emotional reaction to seeing one’s familiar local environment made unfamiliar by manifestations of the larger problem of climate change. Today, I’m focusing on climate grief, the mourning of our planet’s natural ecosystems as if they are already dead.
Many activists have noted that climate grief can stand in the way of making the changes needed to slow the advance of climate change. The changes that have already taken place to the environment are so dramatic that people can come to feel hopeless, as if life on earth is already doomed, so that there’s nothing left to do but grieve for its loss.
Of course, there is plenty that we can do to slow down climate change. There are easy changes individuals and businesses can make to lower their carbon emissions. I was struck, for example, by the outrageous waste I saw walking past an iteration of the Bar Louie franchise in Irving, Texas last week. It was 10:30 in the morning, and the drinking hole wasn’t even yet open. Yet, the establishment’s electronic outdoor lighting was on, and an automatic system was spraying a cooling mist over the place’s outdoor patio, where no one was sitting.
It makes sense to mourn what has been lost, but the climate isn’t dead yet. We desperately need to deal with wasteful, unnecessary carbon emissions like those made by that restaurant down in Texas. It’s too late to avoid the consequences of climate change, but the extent of those consequences can be strongly impacted by the choices we make now.
