After a long couple of months, the quarantine is loosening its grip on the United States. With fewer restrictions, people are able to meet with friends and see family outside their homes. And with life slowly returning to normal, the media’s focus has begun to shift from constantly monitoring COVID-19 to our climate. Humanity has shown that we can make simple changes to save the planet during the quarantine, but what if all the progress we have made stops or worse reverses itself? It’s stressful to think about.
Recently, I watched a webinar from Climate Reality focusing on mental health and our ongoing situation with climate change. Here’s what I learned.
- There are two kinds of anxieties from climate change: environmental grief and eco-anxiety. Environmental grief is the grief stemming from the environmental loss of ecosystems caused by natural or man-made events. Eco-anxiety is chronic or severe anxiety relating to the relationship with the environment. It can be easy to feel both of these when the future looks dismal, especially when you’re not old enough to vote or drive to protests. Luckily there are other ways to help.
- To adults. You need to be good examples for us. Something that the webinar mentioned was that young people want to feel a part of the solution and they’re right- we do. You as the grown ups must be willing to acknowledge and listen to us for that to happen though.
- To teens and kids. We must start by educating ourselves about the problem. We may not be able to vote for the leaders we feel would be best for the environment, but we can attempt to push adults to vote. Most people already know there’s a problem. It’s our job to find the right solutions and use our skills to spread hope.
- To make progress we have to be honest with ourselves. We need to acknowledge just how bad the problem is to find what Climate Reality calls “authentic hope.” Authentic hope is knowing that the situation is far from perfect, but solutions exist. Many environmental groups and organizations have made progress.
- What we can do. Climate Reality put a lot of emphasis on making our government consider nature when making their decisions and on us to look at our carbon footprint and make changes. To make sure the government considers nature, we can get engaged with local laws and make sure our representatives hear us. Some ways to lower your carbon footprint include eating a mostly (if not all) plant based diet, using solar panels, and buying hybrid cars that run on electricity.
By taking action and informing others, we go from being bystanders watching the situation unfold anxiously to upstanders who try to change the situation. Most of eco-anxiety comes from feeling helpless. Doing what we can to change our future will lower anxiety and give us overall better mental health.