I have felt hopelessness over climate change. Here is how we move past the immense grief.

My intellectual and rational understanding of it has shifted to much more of an emotional and personal one.

‘Human society under urgent threat from loss of Earth’s natural life.’ ‘The planet has seen sudden warming before, it wiped out almost everything.’

These are some of the headlines that bombard us at ever-increasing rates.

Each day new reports and household names such as David Attenborough warn of “irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies”. The United Nations says we have 12 years to avoid climate catastrophe. We are also amidst the world’s sixth mass extinction, the worst since the time of the dinosaurs.

This reality is taking its toll on our mental health, especially among younger people who are understandably losing hope for their futures on a hotter planet. We are seeing the rise of what is known as climate or ecological grief. This grief summarises feelings of loss, anger, hopelessness, despair and distress caused by climate change and ecological decline.

We are facing a state of continual unfolding loss, compounding impacts on our psyches. It could be loss of animals and plants we hold dear or lifestyles we have grown accustomed to such as eating whatever we want whenever we want. As the time length between loss and impacts shorten, personal recovery times reduce. At the same time there is anxiety about what is still to come.

Yet there is no way to do justice to the threats we face without it being scary and provoking anxiety. How do we face up to these warnings without falling into apathy, denial or being evangelically optimistic? How do we find a way to confront our climate and ecological reality and yet respond in a meaningful, purposeful way?

Former UN climate chief Cristiana Figueres has argued the only way we can save the planet is with relentless, stubborn optimism. This is the kind of attitude that many of us are culturally trained to adopt, to keep looking on the bright side and remain hopeful.

Climate change and environmental movements have long been criticised for trying to motivate the population through negative narratives and doomsday scenarios. It is obvious how such framings can turn people off or at worse encourages a state of denial. As a result, we have seen much of the movement shift in recent years towards more positive narratives of climate hope and telling stories of change.

People also need agency to act to avoid feelings of apathy and hopelessness.

Acknowledging this, the last decade has seen a focus on what the individual can do to tackle climate change in their own life. This has largely resulted in a politically passive eco-modern citizen that is more concerned with energy-efficient technologies, light bulbs and recycling than dissent, protest and structural change. Personal guilt comes to the fore when the virtuous lists and sustainable resolutions are not kept up with, and the issue is again pushed out of mind.

What is less encouraged is to make space for sorrow and grieving for losses already occurring at a rapid rate in the natural world.

Eco-psychologist Joanna Macy teaches useful frameworks for facing up to disturbing realities and finding capacity for action. First there is the gratitude stage, which focuses our attention on those aspects of life and the world that nourish us. Then there is a stage that honours the pain that we are experiencing. The third and fourth stages relate to exploring new possibilities and finding practical actions to take.

The second stage of “honouring the pain” is one that is often skipped over, as we naturally seek to protect ourselves from negative feelings. But making space for grief can help us confront the reality we face head on, and instead of just looking on the bright side, find a way to move forward.

It would seem that more of us are starting to acknowledge and accept our climate grief. By doing so we create new ways of connecting to one another, to mourn for what we all love and are losing day by day.

Having studied and worked on climate change professionally for over 15 years now, I have increasingly noticed this grief emerge within myself.

I have noticed that my own self-defences are starting to show cracks. More accurately, my intellectual and rational understanding of climate change has shifted to much more of an emotional and personal one.

There have been several instances lately where the impacts of climate change have hit me hard and unexpectedly. Perhaps this is because I am now a father or because scientific projections I learned about 15 years ago are now unfolding quicker than imagined.

I am not alone. I have had numerous conversations where colleagues have broken down about the losses unfolding, whether it’s the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, the fire ravaged forests of Tasmania, the fish deaths in the Murray, or more localised impacts.

In March I went to my local train station to watch 500 schoolkids gather to commute to Melbourne for the big school strike. I was surprised that I found myself moved to tears and overcome with emotion, and that I wasn’t alone among the other adults there.

Last month I found myself crying when a platypus appeared in the creek down from our house. Standing on the bridge with my two young boys we watched it swim in a creek that has been tirelessly regenerated by the local friends group over at least 15 years. A creek, which for the past 150 years, flowed through a highly degraded landscape decimated by goldmining and agriculture.

What I find curious is that both these instances were essentially positive, inspiring moments. Yet they seemed to bring forth sadness or internalised grief that had been buried out of sight. But they provoked a different kind of hope, a hope stemming from witnessing the power of activated groups.

There are many reasons to feel that we are at a critical turning point. A turning point where we can create a positive vision for the future and are engaged in shaping it, rather than feeling disempowered and watching as an inevitable future of loss unfolds.

We are seeing a dramatic rise of nonviolent protest movements around the world such as the Extinction Rebellion, the New Green Deal in the US and the School Strike movement led by the dynamic Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg. Such movements are healthy as they give us an awakened sense of agency that goes beyond personal guilt for our own carbon intensive vices.

More and more institutions are adopting climate emergency language. The UK and 446 local governments across the world have now declared a climate emergency. This is the ripple effect in action, the result of several local councils in Australia moving first.

US climate activist Bill McKibben argues that the most important thing one can do to tackle the climate crisis is stop being an individual and to take action together.

But to truly tackle the climate and extinction crisis we also need to give ourselves permission to grieve, personally and collectively. We can use grief to galvanise what is most important and bring forth new visions.

Then we need to be empowered, to be fearless and take action. One of the most important ways to take action is to vote for what matters most and to vote for parties which have clear policies to address climate change.

For Australians we have that chance on 18 May.

• Rob has worked on climate change for more than a decade for government, universities and not-for-profit organisations

 

    9 May 2019