Negotiating Ecological Grief

Climate change is frightening and depressing — but that shouldn’t stop us from finding joy in the struggle for a better future

Slash burn behind a clearcut lot in Gifford Pinhcot National Forest, WA. 📷 Doug Bierend

Yesterday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its latest report on the state and future of Earth’s climate and biosphere. As expected, it was more dire than the last report, which was more dire than the one before, and so on.

And so it will go until, well…

Meanwhile, the unceasing stream of news about fires, heat domes, and other unfamiliar and frightening phenomena are making clear that the world isn’t just changing—it has changed. Given how things have gone for the last few years and decades, no one who has paid attention could reasonably have expected a turn for the better. But the sheer scale and speed of the disruptions described in the report, and the degree of certitude that these are now unavoidable, thanks to sustained inaction, were jarring even for those who have followed this grim situation for many years.

The mainstream climate conversation, it seems, has finally made the shift from figuring out how or whether we can stop the worst from happening, to determining how we make peace with what is now certain to happen. Our primary task has become one of mitigating the negatives to whatever degree is possible. In that light, it’s little wonder that ‘eco-anxiety’ and ‘climate grief’ have become part of our lexicon.

In 2017, the American Psychological Association coined the term eco-anxiety, defined as “a chronic fear of environmental doom.” According to a survey made in 2018, some 70 percent of Americans are worried about climate change, while more than half describe feeling “helpless” about it. None of this should be surprising. If assessed with clear eyes, the state of affairs are a lot for anyone to process. Here is a short list of some conclusions from IPCC report by way of a press release:

Screenshot of findings summarized in the 2021 IPCC report press release.

For every project we undertake moving forward, individually or as a society, the frame of reference is going to be that of a planet rapidly tilting away from…