Over the last few decades, people have articulated many different emotions that are provoked by the unraveling of the biosphere on our planet. This kind of linguistic innovation makes sense, given that this is the only world we can live on.
Before the spread of COVID-19 made air travel nearly impossible, we felt the guilt flygskam, knowing how much ecological damage every flight caused. We feel solastalgia as we notice the ecological decay around us. We feel climate grief as we realize that the natural world is in many ways already dead. Our pain is deepened by our biophilia, a connection to other living things.
These feelings are not at all close to a full representation of our ecological emotions. 29 years ago, journalist Lisa Leff engaged in the first recorded use of the term ecoanxiety, in an article in the Washington Post. The emotional concept of ecoanxiety has spread since then, to such an extent that the American Psychiatric Association recognized the term in 2017, writing that, “long-term changes in climate can also surface a number of different emotions, including fear, anger, feelings of powerlessness, or exhaustion”.
As with general anxiety, ecoanxiety is a feeling arising out of the ancient emotion of angh, a feeling of painful constriction. When we feel ecoanxiety, we feel the pressure of global environmental destruction closing around us, squeezing all hope out of us as we realize the extent to which the ecological crisis is out of our control. We want to do something about it, but we feel powerless to do anything of consequence.
In this regard, ecoanxiety is a delusion. No single person can overcome the ecological devastation that surrounds us. Nonetheless, if everyone made some changes to their lives, the crisis could be solved. Though some irreparable harm has been done, it’s not too late for humanity to save the environmental integrity of our planet and bring back many of the natural treasures of the Earth.
