Why it's hard for me to talk about climate change
Dealing with climate anxiety and white fragility in a time of uncertainty (and a bit about why Star Trek is so important to me right now)
“The era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived. The earth is unbreathable, the heat is unbearable, and the level of fossil fuel profits and climate inaction is unacceptable […] The consequences are clear and they are tragic. Children swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames, workers collapsing in scorching heat […] Leaders must lead. No more hesitancy, no more excuses. No more waiting for others to move first. There is simply no more time for that.”
Antonio Guterres, United Nation’s Secretary-General
I wouldn’t call this an existential crisis. At least, I don’t think it is. Wikipedia defines existential crises as “inner conflicts characterized by the impression that life lacks meaning or by confusion about one’s personal identity.” No, I’ve had those before. This is different.
While anxiety about climate change certainly can (and does) trigger a kind of existential crisis, it has in itself a specific weight and effect on the brain. The technical term for this type of anxiety, eco-anxiety, is defined by the American Psychological Association (APA) as “a chronic fear of environmental doom” (2017). According to ACE (Action for the Climate Emergency), “There are also several different forms of eco-anxiety. For example, ecological grief is feeling a deep sense of sadness at the changing ecosystem. Solastalgia is the feeling of nostalgia for your home environment. However, it is important to note that eco-anxiety is not yet a diagnosable condition and is not the same thing as a clinical anxiety disorder […] these fears can worsen and/or trigger pre-existing mental health conditions” (2022; emphasis not mine).
Over the past few years I have experienced several bouts of climate anxiety. They’re usually brought on by something I hear about or read in the news. I know, consciously, that certain news stories are designed to cause anxiety in readers. I suppose the idea is that you’re more likely to read it if it scares the living shit out of you. I’d like to think it’s also a tactic to get more people to take action. Probably not.
For myself, if I read or hear something that makes me feel physically and effectively helpless, I am more likely to believe that there is nothing I can actually do to change things, whether in the world or in my own life. I start to panic and hyperventilate, and by the time the tears have stopped my whole body is completely numb. I feel as though I could sink to the bottom of an ocean. So, at least for me, these kinds of stories do nothing to inspire me to “take action.” In fact, they do practically the opposite.
The last time I had an episode, a coworker of mine was telling me about how climate change was affecting our state of Colorado. I can’t remember how we got onto this subject, but I vividly recall their attitude of passive defeatism about the whole thing. They talked about how recycling wouldn’t make any real difference in the end, and at some point in the future Colorado would become more like Arizona, but they figured they’d be dead by the time things got really bad, so it really didn’t matter anyways.
Now, I can’t even begin to unpack all the things that are so fundamentally and frighteningly wrong with this mindset, not least of which the privilege of being able to throw up your hands and say, “I’ll be dead by then anyways, so I might as well just not worry about it.” When you stop to consider for more than two seconds just how many people (the vast majority of them non-white and living in impoverished communities) are affected by climate change on a daily basis, and have no choice but to worry, to fear, to fight…
The white fragility/POC vulnerability factor
With that being said, my coworker and I exist functionally on opposite ends of a spectrum that most people would recognize as White Privilege. And a really good example of just how badly any kind of social privilege can fuck up your worldview is how we, the privileged, deal with crises that, ultimately, affect all of us. Whether we want to acknowledge that or not.
Sarah Jaquette Ray, author of “Climate Anxiety Is an Overwhelmingly White Phenomenon” (Scientific American, 2021), writes,
Climate change and its effects—pandemics, pollution, natural disasters—are not universally or uniformly felt: the people and communities suffering most are disproportionately Black, Indigenous and people of color. It is no surprise then that U.S. surveys show that these are the communities most concerned about climate change.
One year ago, I published a book called A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety. Since its publication, I have been struck by the fact that those responding to the concept of climate anxiety are overwhelmingly white. Indeed, these climate anxiety circles are even whiter than the environmental circles I’ve been in for decades […] If people of color are more concerned about climate change than white people, why is the interest in climate anxiety so white? Is climate anxiety a form of white fragility or even racial anxiety? Put another way, is climate anxiety just code for white people wishing to hold onto their way of life or get “back to normal,” to the comforts of their privilege?
My own desire to cling to a way of life that has been slipping away from me since I left childhood definitely plays a role in the way I experience climate anxiety. Without sidestepping the issue here by throwing up my hands and saying “but I’m not a racist!”, I can say with certainty that maintaining the status quo has never been what scares me the most about our climate crisis. I don’t fear (at least, not consciously) losing power as a white person or having to come to terms with our role in the crisis, as much as the loss of a world I once perceived as perfect, designed to set me up for success and happiness, with everything I would need to achieve those things.
Which is precisely what Ray is talking about. You don’t have to be a loud and proud white supremacist to have your worldview warped by privilege. It’s been baked into our DNA since we were born, just as intergenerational trauma is inherited by all children of marginalized communities (non-white, queer, disabled, etc.). My idea of a “perfect world” is something that could never be a reality, even if every social issue were fixed and all people were treated equal. Even if the climate crisis were resolved and we entered a Star Trek-ian era of peace and exploration. That world was never real, and in many ways I’m okay with that. I could never be content to live in a world where “perfection” is predicated on maintaining a status quo that oppresses others and exclusively uplifts the white, the rich, and the abled. But we do live in that world.
As much as it hurts to accept, this panic reaction is not something that we can simply accept as a part of ourselves. It isn’t like having depression or bipolar disorder. Because of its global implications, I can’t just lie back and take it, refusing to listen to the news and face the grief of others. Nor do I want to, really. I would rather be aware of the threat than pretend it doesn’t exist. I would rather write about my fear stemming from privilege than act like it’s something I’ll just get over. I’d rather feel this pain and keep living through it than stare apathetically up at my bedroom ceiling. Because, as Ray asserts,
The prospect of an unlivable future has always shaped the emotional terrain for Black and brown people, whether that terrain is racism or climate change […] Exhaustion, anger, hope—the effects of oppression and resistance are not unique to this climate moment. What is unique is that people who had been insulated from oppression are now waking up to the prospect of their own unlivable future […] Oppressed and marginalized people have developed traditions of resilience out of necessity. Black, feminist and Indigenous leaders have painstakingly cultivated resilience over the long arc of the fight for justice. They know that protecting joy and hope is the ultimate resistance to domination. Persistence is nonnegotiable when your mental, physical and reproductive health are on the line.
And yet, this is not to say that climate anxiety should be ignored. I don’t think Ray wants us to assume that people in minority communities are resilient and hopeful all the time. In fact, another APA report states that “Factors linked to elevated vulnerability to climate impacts include high levels of poverty, lower education levels, and large populations of older adults, children and infants, disabled people, and recently arrived immigrants, migrants, or refugees” 2014. Ray means that these communities have developed and passed down ways to help each other cope with circumstances that disproportionately affect them. But this may not reflect the individual mindset, especially among the youth of today.
My generation
A survey published in 2021 by The Lancet Planetary Health found that “almost 60%” of children and young people “across all countries reported a large amount of worry […] More than 45% of respondents said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily lives […] Countries expressing more worry and a greater impact on functioning tended to be poorer, in the Global South, and more directly impacted by climate change” (Hickman et al). So, even though my own climate anxiety is affected by an internalized sense of privilege, white people are not the only ones who experience it. As a young person, I belong to a global cohort that is being impacted, physically and psychologically, by climate change on a daily basis. My future is no longer assured. Despite my privilege and insulation from most social injustices, I was raised to not ignore the suffering of others. Therefore, I am filled with equal parts guilt and grief. Guilt because of my culture’s contribution to the crisis. Grief because this is my world, too.
My fears and traumas do not, and probably will not, come anywhere close to those of children and young people growing up in the most disadvantaged communities in the world. But they do exist.
Recently, I’d begun to think that climate change wasn’t something I actually had the right to cry about. How could crying about something that is so far beyond myself do any good? Ironically, it seems more acceptable to have a breakdown about things that you actually can control. But when it comes to global crises, we’re expected to pick ourselves up and just cope with it, hopefully in the healthiest ways possible. This is why I’m writing about it, to channel my pain into something proactive. But even that can only get you so far, as my best friend was quick to remind me. Having privilege does not negate our anxiety or grief, any more than being part of a marginalized community means you just have to put a brave face on and keep muddling through. Climate change is terrifying, and while it may affect others more than myself, it nonetheless affects us all.
We still need to pick ourselves up at the end of the day, but we also need to give ourselves time to feel these things. Accepting our emotions and desires, both for the future and in the moment, will allow us to heal much quicker than setting them aside.
(Quick tangent incoming)
I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek lately. I’m usually a pretty casual viewer, and although I finally feel comfortable referring to myself as a ‘Trekkie’, I still have yet to experience the glorious camp and plucky optimism of “The Original Series”. I was first introduced to the franchise by the 2009 cinematic redux, directed by JJ Abrams, but my full emersion into the Star Trek universe came when my mom forced me to watch The Next Generation with her. What began as a placating viewing experience quickly grew into full-on adoration (and a white-hot crush on Brent Spiner’s Lieutenant Commander Data). Years later, my mom and I have continued our romp through the Star Trek universe via Picard, Discovery, and, most recently, Strange New Worlds.
The pilot episode of Strange New Worlds has Captain Christopher Pike and the crew of the USS Enterprise (pre-Kirk) encountering a remarkably Earth-like planet populated by a pre-warp society that has, somehow, begun to develop bombs with warp technology1. By the end of the episode, Pike is able to diffuse the conflict between the planet’s two warring factions by sharing a bit of Earth’s pre-Star Fleet history. “Our conflict also started with a fight for freedoms,” he says, showing footage of protests and the January 6 riots. “We called it the Second Civil War, then the Eugenics War, and finally just World War III. This was our last day. The day the Earth we knew ceased to exist.” The footage now shows nuclear bombs igniting in several major cities. Pike continues, “What began as an eruption in one nation ended in the eradication of 600,000 species of animals and plants and 30% of Earth’s population. Global suicide. What we gave you is the means to exterminate yourselves. And from the looks of you, you’re gonna do it. You’ll use competing ideals of liberty to bomb each other to rubble, just like we did, and then your last day will look just like this.” Earth from space, fires burning across continents. “But I choose to believe that your destinies are still your own. Maybe that’s why I’m here, to remind you of the power of possibility…right up until the very end, life is to be worn gloriously. Because, until our last moment, the future’s what we make it.”
It’s important to note that, in the context of when Star Trek was first made (late ‘60s), the biggest threat to human existence, and to all life on the planet, was the very real possibility of nuclear warfare. The United States was living in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which “was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict.”2 The Cold War would last from 1947 to 1991. So it’s safe to say that, for Gene Roddenberry’s generation, the existential fear was immediate and, for many, seemed imminent. For a tv show about humanity’s far future to say that, not only would we survive this disaster, but we would ultimately become better than we ever imagined, was radical to say the least. The ultimate act of hope is to stare doom in the face and believe that we can come back from it stronger than before.
My generation’s climate anxiety is very different from Generation X’s terror of nuclear destruction, although they both stem from the same existential dread.
For many of us, nuclear warfare is only one part of the problem, and most of us no longer fear the immediacy of a bomb wiping out all life on Earth in just a few days. Instead, we are living with a catastrophe that is gradual and creeping. We feel the fallout of this disaster a little bit every day. It’s somehow
a bomb that has already gone off, and one that has yet to ignite. This paradox of in-betweenness is the paradigm of our eco-anxiety. We are not waiting for a trigger to be pulled. Instead, we are the proverbial frog being boiled slowly, but with a deeply-ingrained knowledge of exactly what is happening to us. Is this to say that we should just give up and accept our fate, like my coworker?
Absolutely fucking not.
Returning to Lanced Planetary Health’s survey:
[C]limate distress in children and young people can be regarded as unjust and involving moral injury […] Moral injury has been described as “a sign of mental health, not disorder…a sign that one’s conscience is alive”, yet it inflicts considerable hurt and wounding because governments are transgressing fundamental moral beliefs about care, compassion, planetary health, and ecological belonging. This sense of the personal, collective, and ecological perspective is sumarised in the words of one 16-year-old: “I think it’s different for young people. For us the destruction of the planet is personal.” […] Climate anxiety indicates the care and empathy that young people have for our world. As one young person said: “I don’t want to die. But I don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t care about children and animals.”
One of the most common factors among those afflicted with eco-anxiety is a feeling of profound helplessness, especially with children and young people. But we young people have a very special power, and that is our “care and empathy.” While I will freely admit that not every young person I’ve ever met has this power, I assure you that the vast majority of them do, and they are very strong. Our tears are powerful. Our rage is powerful. Our hope is a light that breaks through the thickest despair. This is the reminder that I need whenever I find myself staring up at my bedroom ceiling in the middle of the night, wondering what I was made for, why I would be here only to see the ending of everything I love.
I’m not sure how to end this post. To keep myself from rambling, I’ll simply end by saying that, if anyone wants to talk about feelings of anxiety or despair relating to climate change, or offer words of hope, please don’t hesitate to comment on this post, and share it with anyone you know who needs to be comforted.3
Before you go: Shoutout to a fellow Substacker!
Although
, author of the popular newsletter , definitely doesn’t know who I am and has probably never even heard of me, I wanted to take this opportunity to give her stack a major shoutout, because she is without a doubt one of the reasons why I feel so empowered to write a post like this. If you’re reading this Claudia, I find your work, and your furious hope in the face of our current climate crisis, incredibly inspiring. The media needs more voices like yours to quell the tide of nihilism and hopelessness we have all had to learn to navigate over the past decade.One of my most fervently held goals is to some day form a support group for people with eco-anxiety, where we can talk and discuss our feelings of fear and hopelessness, share mental health resources and reliable links to positive news stories regarding the environment, and just generally lift each other up. I feel that community is our strongest defense against this affliction, and I would be honored if you would consider yourself an unofficial member of this group (which will hopefully become a reality soon).
For those not in the know, “warp” is shorthand for the era of technology that Star Trek’s prime timeline exists in, where ships have the ability to travel at the speed of light.
I will also be posting a thread right after this newsletter for people to have more in-depth conversations and share their personal experiences relating to climate change and eco-anxiety.
I took days to think through this analysis. It touches the world outside and your particular world and history at many points. You acknowledge your privilege, a"safe" spot psychically but not actually, because sooner or later, the deleterious effects of climate change will hurt us all. But you don't sit in your awareness and pain! You are calling up courage to speak to this more-than-inconvenient-truth, and be an example to others of your generation. I honor you, Celeste. Keep writing!