THE RISE OF ECO - GRIEF
WORRY ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE IS SO COMMON, IT’S SPARKED A NEW MENTAL-HEALTH EPIDEMIC: ECOLOGICAL GRIEF. BUT THERE ARE TWO GROUPS OF PEOPLE PROVING HOPE IS ANOTHER OPTION
Our conscience about the planet is having side effects.
SUMMER 2019: Massive fires race across Tasmania, destroying thousands of hectares of majestic Huon Valley forest. Record-breaking rains flood Townsville, with lethal bacteria in the water contributing to the death toll. A tiny rodent from Bramble Cay in the Torres Strait becomes the first-known mammal driven to extinction by human-induced climate change. And that’s just in our own backyard.
We’re living in a time of serious uncertainty. Our feeds are overflowing with doomsday prophecies: pictures of starving polar bears, terrifying clips from climate change activists, stats that tell us the past five years were the hottest ever recorded. It’s information overload, forcing the message on us over and over until we feel powerless to help. Even when the news is good, it’s overwhelming. Footage from climate change rallies gives the sense we should be doing more. Cries for action from young activists like Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish girl who started the global school strike for climate action movement, clang against the denial of governments.
We’re working through emotions such as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, fear, angst, regret, hopelessness. Sounds like a kind of mourning, right?
Actually, so many people are feeling this way that there’s now a psychological term for it: ecological grief. It’s the sensation of losing something important – or knowing we might – because of climate change.
Dr Susie Burke is a senior psychologist from Melbourne with a focus on environment and disaster response. “Regardless of the cause,” she says, “those mental health conditions are painful and distressing and difficult for people to manage. The feelings are real. Is it rational for people to be feeling that intensity of emotions in response to the vicarious threat of climate change? Yes, it is very rational.”
In her practice, Dr Burke is increasingly seeing patients for ecological grief. “People are coming to see me who are either working in the environmental field or are very environmentally aware and trying to live sustainably and responsibly, with the leading issue being their really deep distress about climate change. And it sometimes comes up as moderate-to-severe depression.”
She says every kind of grief is legitimate, from what’s felt by families ripped apart by disaster to those of us who are fearful and concerned from a distance. “We can be confident that there’s going to be an increasing mental health impact for affected communities,” she says. “There are also psychosocial impacts – things like increasing stress, relationship problems, problems at work, marital problems, children’s behavioural problems.”
Resentment, fury, misery, listlessness and bingeing on Netflix in our jammies are all valid responses to watching the world disintegrate around us. “Those who are aware of just how much the very system that we love needs to change, and will be forced to change, can experience the existential threat of climate change,” says Dr Burke. So how can we push through?
To find out, I asked one of my oldest friends, marine microbiologist Dr Stacy Deppeler. She’s spent almost a decade studying some of the smallest victims of our changing environment: phytoplankton in Antarctic sea ice. She’s seen the impact firsthand, spending months of 24-hour-daylight immersed in research, and she says the messages the public gets are not quite the full story. “It’s easy to feel discouraged when we see so much bad news about climate change in the media,” she tells me. “What isn’t shown is the mammoth amount of work being done every day by scientists around the world. There are thousands [of people] working tirelessly on climate change research every single day.”
“IS IT RATIONAL TO BE FEELING THAT INTENSITY OF EMOTIONS IN RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE? YES”
The danger of endless bad news is we shut down. We flick over to the new season of Derry Girls. We eat a whole cake. “There’s only so much negative reporting that people can take before a large percentage will just switch off,” says Dr Deppeler. “It creates a sense of helplessness that either leads to ambivalence or complete despair. I’ve had plenty of people ask me, ‘What’s the point of trying if the world is already doomed?’ But that’s not the case.”
It’s a double-edged sword. Dr Deppeler says sensationalised images have helped drive home the urgency of climate change to the world, but now the public is exhausted by fatalistic reporting. So scientists have started taking their work directly to the people – and that’s one place we can be focusing our attention. “Most organisations now have social media accounts that provide snapshots of the great work being done by the scientists who work there,” she says. “Engaging with the general public about our scientific research has become a key focus as of late. As scientists, this is a different way of communicating than we’re used to, so that means we need to rethink how we present our knowledge to the public. We understand that in order for us to truly connect the work we’re doing with someone’s day-to-day life, we need to meet them face-to-face, let them know that we’re here to help, and work on finding solutions to local issues that they can really engage with. I think we’ve reached a point now where we, as scientists, need to show the public that we haven’t given up and we’re working really hard to both understand and mitigate climate change as best we can.”
Yet our efforts to defend future generations might still be outweighed by the damage we’ve already done. It’s one thing to be a fully-grown adult who had childhoods full of bearably hot Christmases and cool winters, and rode bikes on spring afternoons when having four seasons was still a thing. The next generations don’t have the luxury of short-term thinking. For them, the impact of climate change isn’t a hypothetical. The planet they inherit might be uninhabitable before they’ve had a chance to really live in it. They’re 15 years old and asking questions we never did – should I go to uni or should I learn how to stay alive when it’s 50 degrees in the shade?
CSIRO’S Director of Land and Water, Jane Coram, knows that as well as anyone. “Last summer was horrendous,” she says. “All of a sudden it’s taken the prediction of climate-change scientists out of the science domain and put it in people’s real lives. We’re at the point now where it’s not just business as usual. We shouldn’t underestimate the challenge that it’s causing. Anxiety and depression are a response to feeling powerless.”
But only one response. While some of us react by isolating ourselves in dark rooms (me), others are taking back control. An uprising of determined, clever and loud young people is sweeping the globe. In March of this year, under threat of “punishment” from schools and politicians alike, nearly 150,000 Australian students went on strike to march for climate action. They had signs (“When I said I’d rather die than go to chemistry, that was hyperbole, assholes!”). They had chants. They had spokespeople. It was passionate, furious and organised. They’re feeling the same ecological grief as the rest of us, but they’re using it for good. Zoe Whitaker is 21 and studying environmental science at the University of Technology Sydney. “At times I feel very overwhelmed that we don’t have enough time to make the changes we need to make,” she says. “I definitely feel that those in charge don’t have the same sense of urgency or don’t actually understand how dire the situation is.” She claims we all need a shift in mindset if we’re hoping for a future with breathable air and usable land, and we need it now. “Environmental destruction is not a hypothetical future problem.”
“AS SCIENTISTS, WE NEED TO SHOW THE PUBLIC THAT WE HAVEN’T GIVEN UP “
Whitaker’s words echo through the incredible work being done by others facing life in an irreversibly changed world. The Australian Student Environment Network (asen.org.au) hosts conferences and training camps to bring young activists together to “build capacity, community and alternatives towards an environmentally and socially just world”. Millennium Kids (millenniumkids.com.au) is a youth environmental action group with 15 people aged 10 to 24 on its board (a 10-year-old on a board).
In her role as NSW state coordinator for the Australian Youth Climate Commission (AYCC), Grace Vegesana has turned her passion for the environment into action. The AYCC (aycc.org. au) is Australia’s largest youth-run organisation, a movement of more than 150,000 people who are “fighting for a safe climate”. She says she was motivated by a hunger to learn about injustice: “When I heard the term ‘climate refugees’, my world came to a standstill.” Vegesana is only 19, but she speaks about climate reform with more grace and awareness than anyone who’s drifted in or out of our government. There’s an urgency to her compassion. “Young people today do not have the privilege of being an apathetic, climate-denying generation. If we do not enact climate justice now, the consequences of our inaction will hurt us beyond belief.”
It’s easy to believe this upcoming generation might just save us all. There’s lightness around if we look for it. We have access to more information than ever before, for better or worse. We can look past the headlines to find ideas from real scientists. We can be amazed by the work everyday people are doing. We must step back for some self-care when we need to, but we must engage, participate and be hopeful.
Dr Deppeler, who is the most sensible person I know, warns against despair. “It’s not the time to give in and surrender our fate,” she says. “This is too important for us to give up on.” If you or anyone you know needs support, contact Beyond Blue at beyondblue.org.au or on 1300 224 636.
“WE MUST STEP BACK FOR SELF-CARE, BUT WE MUST ALSO ENGAGE, PARTICIPATE AND BE HOPEFUL”