Climate anxiety: Moving past worry to action

You can add worry about climate change — Will we run out of water? How wild will the weather get? Does this planet have a future? — to the list of things vexing teens and young adults who are already stressed over the cost of college and food and housing and myriad other issues.

Protecting the environment is a concern that spans generations. However, experts have observed that younger people increasingly grapple with a deep sense of doom — fearing that the Earth is on a trajectory of decline, with its beauty fading far too soon, destroying their future as well.

Scroll TikTok or Instagram and it’s easy to find young adults expressing their worries on a spectrum that ranges from “What can I do” to “The world is burning.”

“I would agree that this is a growing concern. Young people have a more informed understanding of the science of climate change and the direct impact on their future inside of their lifetime,” said therapist Jenny Howe, an anxiety expert with a practice in Farmington, Utah. She said she hears those fears expressed by her young clients.

Luke Runyon, co-director of The Water Desk, a University of Colorado Boulder publication, told Deseret News he often sees what’s been called “climate anxiety” provoke one of two reactions: It sparks people to act or leads to despair.

Both emotions can be good motivators, but in the three-plus years he was on the Society of Environmental Journalists board, he said the topic of mental health challenges escalated by climate change came up frequently.

“I would never want somebody’s climate anxiety to turn into climate despair,” said Runyon. The amount of bad news in the hard science makes it easy to lapse into that, he added.

How concerns are addressed could make the difference between feeling paralyzed and figuring out solutions to real problems, while letting go of any overblown worries, according to experts.

Howe suggests the best way to handle “any large, overwhelming problem,” is to break it into smaller chunks.

For example, she said, “What are my concerns about the climate? Then, what actions can I take that directly align with my values in response to that?”

If someone is concerned about emissions, the response might be to ride share or take public transportation. Perhaps that person could promote awareness through activism. Or create a career path designed to address the concern. The question is how to address the climate challenges without being frozen by fear. There’s growing consensus that tone matters — and so does feeling there’s something you can do.

“Big problems create big fears, but we always have a choice to take values-directed action,” Howe told Deseret News.

Reacting to natural disasters

Superstorm Sandy energized environmental journalist Yessenia Funes’ career. She was attending college a safe distance inland when Sandy hit in 2012, but her mom lived on Long Island in New York and didn’t have the same geographical luck.

“My mom lost power for two weeks when Superstorm Sandy happened,” Funes told Deseret News. “While my mom was without power for two weeks, the same can’t be said for the more affluent parts of Long Island. That really solidified my commitment to covering environmental issues,” which she has done for nearly a decade.

Recently, she was part of a panel discussion at the society’s annual conference in Philadelphia discussing “Care and Community as a Climate Solution.”

She said journalists may carry a lot of trauma. “And many of us do this work because we care, right? There’s so much of that work that fuels me and keeps me going. And there are other aspects of the work that can be really paralyzing and heartbreaking.”

Rather than a source of hope for readers who struggle with climate-induced anxiety, she would like to be their source for solutions. ”I see solutions journalism as a really important bucket of storytelling in the sense that it’s showing examples of how folks are perhaps building clean energy solutions without the support of the government or without tons of resources,” she said. “Communities are figuring it out on their own or tapping into what is available.”

She believes that “the stakes are too high” to allow despair and hopelessness to take over. So she writes with optimism and suggests determination can make a difference. But she admits that “for me, hope is a complicated emotion.”

Funes, like Howe, believes people worry about climate alongside a host of other concerns. And how those are prioritized may be situational.

“We need everyone to be involved in this,” said Funes, noting in the U.S. some people are concerned about putting food on the table or affording housing, so “it’s going to be really difficult for people to tap into those emotions of climate grief and climate anxiety when they just have so much grief and anxiety about everything else.”

A message that causes dread

Benji Backer, founder of the American Conservative Coalition, remembers learning about climate change in high school less than a decade ago and feeling the problem was hopeless. He suspects the message design was chosen to instill urgency and encourage young people to want to take action.

But what he took from it was that all is lost and what can one person do anyway. That message, he said, is both counterproductive and misleading.

Instead, he said young people should be given truthful information about climate change, emphasizing that collective action can make a difference.

Backer said that educators play an important role in fostering practical solutions. But too often, the message is shrill and devoid of hope.

The next generation needs to lead, rather than fear, he said.

Take partisan politics out of Earth’s challenges

Backer also believes the environment and both its challenges and promise should be seen as nonpartisan, as such issues used to be viewed. Young people could demand that, he said. In early spring, he will launch an initiative called “Nature Is Nonpartisan,” hoping to unite Americans across the political spectrum on environmental issues, believing they are of interest to all who like to hunt and fish, hike, breathe clean air, drink clean water or just leave the planet at least as good as they found it.

He likens the environment to a very steep mountain. You can look at it and say there’s no way to conquer that. Or you can take a step and then another and another.

The partisan nature of the discussion is tribal, said Backer. No facts back up the notion that what’s happening to the climate isn’t a problem. Nor do facts back up the view the world is ending, he said.

“Both sides are using this issue to score political points rather than actually speaking the truth. We need to get out of our heads that compromise or — even better — collaboration is a bad thing. There were issues until the early 2000s where Americans were totally OK with somebody working across the aisle, and the environment is one of them. We need to get back to that,” Backer said.

Everyone doing something can make a difference — anything from driving less to being more conscious about where we get our products from or dedicating a career to the topic, starting businesses or joining a company that focuses on sustainability, he said.

Because there’s a lot of money to be made from environmental efforts, Backer sees room to hope the challenge can be solved by group action. Nor does everyone need to be extreme, foregoing all red meat or giving up their car. But if someone wants to do that, they should.

Lynden Abernathy, 24, an analyst for the Geographic Information Systems division of the Provo City Public Works Department, chose her environmental geography major at Brigham Young University because it allowed her to tackle issues she was passionate about through a political and cultural lens.

Abernathy told Deseret News she initially wanted to understand the human actions that brought us to this point with the environment, and what it means for her future.

What she realized was, there is no one place to point the finger. “We all have a part to play in our respective sectors and spaces to make changes,” she said. “But I definitely see why people do have anxious feelings about the environment.” Some of her friends’ anxiety over the environment has led them to forego having children. Those are extreme cases.

“I think people tend to focus on what’s going wrong,” she said, adding that staying informed matters, but should include good things, too.

Positive changes she lauds include the European Union’s reduction in coal and gas use due to renewable energy investments in the last couple of decades and the scientific findings that the ozone layer is recovering quicker than anticipated. On a local level, Abernathy said bipartisan efforts gave federal funding to support restoring the Great Salt Lake. Those have all given her hope for what’s ahead.

Who’s supposed to lead the way?

Backer suggests people pay attention to politicians who are open to bipartisan solutions, such as the Conservative Climate Caucus that Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, and also a senator-elect, started.

“Start with that list.” Then add the Democrats and Republicans who voted for the Climate Solutions bill, which passed 92-8 in the Senate, he said. “These are people at least somewhat open to working across the aisle on this. Have them hear your voice in a positive way.” He adds to the list advocates willing to get involved and corporations already engaged with the challenges.

Curtis on how to frame issues

Curtis argues that framing climate issues as crises seems counterproductive and causes unneeded anxiety. He told Deseret News that family conversations focusing on practical actions like recycling and using LED bulbs are more helpful, fostering a sense of control and reducing anxiety.

Curtis advocates for starting discussions on common ground to avoid getting bogged down in politics or even science: After all, who doesn’t want to leave the earth better than they found it?

That’s the approach he’s tried to take with the caucus, he said — a group that includes 85 House Republicans and is “changing the dialogue on climate issues in a more productive manner.”

Curtis believes family conversations are vital, especially since young people are getting so much information in school or online that builds anxiety, which they may not tell their parents about.

Young people are already in an anxiety crisis and discussions might help reduce some of the pressure, he said. “I think moms and dads need to be receptive to what their kids are hearing, but also present their perspective.” He remembers his own kids coming home and announcing, in effect, that the planet would blow up if the family didn’t start recycling immediately.

The better conversation, he felt, was what recycling is, why it’s helpful and what the Curtis family could do to be part of it.

He also said people might look too often to Washington, D.C., and “big government” to fix problems. “I like to remind people there’s a lot of really small things they can do.” Giving kids reasonable actions engages them in making a difference without amping anxiety.

Is there risk in taking science and politics out of the discussion? So far, he said, the talk has been all science or all politics. “How’s that going for you? Right? That’s not working,” he said. He notes that parents should not shy away from conversations about science. But if the goal is making kids less anxious, “bring it down to a common denominator we can all agree on.”

While family members don’t always agree on science or politics, they likely agree they love Utah, the mountains, clear air, clean water, the beauty of nature.

“You know, there’s all of these things that you can talk about as a family that make you good stewards and that people can feel comfortable with regardless of where they are on the political scale of climate issues,” he said.

He uses that approach with colleagues, friends and others, and has found it opens up conversations and action, too. His example is inversions, which he’s pretty sure no Utahn likes.

He adds that if everything is elevated to crisis level, then nothing is actually a crisis. “I don’t think it’s been healthy for the movement; I think it has caused some people to turn away that might otherwise engage.”

Runyon has a similar thought: He said though humans have a large impact on the Earth and its ecosystem at this moment, “we’re just a tiny little blip in the history of this planet.”

Runyon noted we often underestimate Mother Nature’s resilience in the face of climate disasters. “I’ve been able to see, living in the West, that when something happens like a natural disaster, a wildfire or a flood … you can see how quickly some of the ecosystems rebound. If you’re talking about a big flood, it scours out this whole flood plain and takes down all these old trees and there’s landslides and rockslides and all. It looks really destructive. Then you come back a few years later and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, this landscape is recovering. It’s doing what ecosystems do.’ It’s a very resilient thing. That gives me hope.”

Still, Runyon warns that people must continue to be land stewards.

The right kind of conversation

Curtis has deliberately approached conversations about climate issues congenially.

“I’ve still got major disagreements with some of my colleagues about how to reduce pollution and emissions, but the conversation is now much different than a debate about science. It’s more of a debate about methods to improve whatever we agree we need to improve.”

He added, “We all agree that less pollution is better than more pollution. So let’s talk about how we do that. It’s a much more productive conversation than let’s have an arm wrestle about exactly how much influence man has had on climate change. You’re never going to find consensus on that.”

Curtis’ advice to parents:

• Talk with family members about practical steps to be better environmental stewards.
• Have open conversations about climate change and environmental concerns, but don’t get bogged down in political or scientific debates.
• Promote finding common ground on principles like reducing pollution and improving the environment, rather than focusing on disagreements. That’s advice for any conversation on the topic, not just those among family members, he said.