Ecoanxiety and the ecological grief, the new state of mind

Imagine you are walking through a forest by yourself in the woods, with your earphones on, lost into some deep thoughts.  Suddenly, a bear appears a few metres ahead and it’s running towards you. Your body gears into a reaction, survival mode that we call fight or flight.   This is how various animals fled from predators, and survived.  This fight or flight mode is a constructive unpleasant emotion : it’s allowed us to evolve and survive up to this day.

Now you’re on the bus home reading the news.  Melting glacier. Rising sea levels. Increasing carbon dioxide levels, and politicians stalling more than ever.  You’re getting this very uncomfortable feeling. Depressed, anxious, sad, outraged : Ecoanxiety is also a Constructive Unpleasant Emotion; but you need to know what to do with it. However uncomfortable it might make us feel, however annoying it might be (we have a strong tendency to avoid thinking about it), we as a species need to figure out ways to react to it.  It might just save our existence on this planet. 

Watching the slow and seemingly irrevocable impacts of climate change unfold, and worrying about the future for oneself, children, and later generations, may be an additional source of stress (Searle & Gow, 2010). Albrecht (2011) and others have termed this anxiety ecoanxiety. Qualitative research provides evidence that some people are deeply affected by feelings of loss, helplessness, and frustration due to their inability to feel like they are making a difference in stopping climate change (Moser, 2013).

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Now humans are faced with the threat of extinction -- yet we are slow at running away from the danger.  We are bombarded with negative news on a daily basis and this is causing a lot of anxiety. We are slowly building a set of emotions that is helping us as a species survive this existential threat, and ecoanxiety is one of them: it’s a constructive unpleasant emotion, if you know how to channel it. 

Some of us have an easier time expressing it, like Greta Thunberg; she is very open about her Asperger’s syndrome that allows her to see only black and white. In her TED talk, she explains that it is one of the reasons why she is speaking up about climate change.

Du reste, on apprend que le duvet des eiders s’avère particulièrement recherché : sacs de couchage, oreillers, vêtements chauds en seraient bourrés. Heureusement, les plumes sont récoltées à la main, dans les nids, en tout respect des aires de protection et du calendrier de nidification. On s’assure ainsi que l’espèce se reproduise dans des havres de tranquillité, loin des prédateurs ou, pire, des chasseurs.

Puis, on aborde enfin l’île.

Pendant la présentation de Jean-François Giroux, biologiste et membre du conseil d’administration de la Société Duvetnor, on nous avise que des déchets plastiques, ici, on en trouve jusque dans les nids des oiseaux, à travers les brindilles et les plumes. On a même déjà trouvé un briquet. Certains canards confondent aussi des résidus d’emballages plastiques et des algues.

On commence le nettoyage des berges. On s’aperçoit que les détritus sont plus rares sur la plage à proximité des sentiers : manifestement, la sensibilisation à la pollution plastique donne des résultats. On postule que les touristes et les campeurs prêtent davantage attention à l’environnement, laissent de moins en moins de traces de leur passage dans la nature et contribuent activement à nettoyer les berges à proximité des sentiers. Mais plus on s’éloigne sur la berge, plus on accède au côté sauvage de l’île. Et l’accumulation de déchets y est manifeste. Comme si, à toutes les saisons, depuis des dizaines d’années, les macroplastiques s’accumulaient là, parce que personne n’avait ramassé avant nous. On dirait un “dépotoir sauvage”.

Not alone 

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In a meeting in Toronto with Innovation Norway, Alana Prashad shares with me her experience of dealing with two chronic immune diseases.   Her body gets triggered when she is exposed to high levels of stress — climate change news, populist politics, and other bad news. 

Our conversation drifted away from green, clean business in the Norwegian trade context to a discussion about ecoanxiety, and turning it into something meaningful: 

Alana tells me that she had to find ways to uses her anxiety about the state of the planet, and turn it into something good; she tells me that she tries and sees beauty in desolated landscapes: plastic floating in oceans, rising sea levels; she finds in these bleak images the elements that are worth fighting for — the beauty, the little bits of light in the darkness, the “okay, what do we have”.  

Again — action alleviates anxiety.

In Alana’s case, she had to quickly get adapted because she was becoming very ill.  

Now Alana is aligning her work on fighting climate change through Innovation Norway’s business development agenda.  I thought this was very inspiring — turning ecoanxiety into climate action. I was stunned. I left our meeting empowered, and convinced that we’d change the world together, somehow. 

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En couches sédimentaires s’étalent un rectangle de terre, de la cellulose, du polyester, de la poussière et de l’humus. Une couche de sable, une couche de plastique devenu extra-friable.

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