The Multi-Faceted Emotional Weight of Climate Change: The Moral Reckoning

Photo by Marcus Ganahl on Unsplash

Climate change is a technical problem, right? Something that can be fixed with better technologies and smarter policies. But what about the disruption happening at a different level; our personal connection. What about those of us who are already entangled in the affairs of climate change, the reports we read that spell doom, the people who feel the weight of what’s coming and cannot unknow what they know. It is not just eco-anxiety, but a tangle of grief, guilt, responsibility and motivation simultaneously. Climate change is not just an environmental crisis but a psychological and moral reckoning. What is climate change doing to us and what effect will that have on humanity?

In recent research, through in depth interviews with climate-sensitive people, experimenters have tried to make sense of the components surrounding negative emotions as a result of a damaged planet. They open a mirror into how it feels to live in the age of climate change, mapping the psychological factors shaping a generation grappling with its own environmental reality. The research suggests that these ‘eco-emotions’ have structure, patterns and have a meaningful impact on our behaviours – what we think and how we do, or fail to, act.

Eco-Anxiety itself falls into many categories; fear for future generations, empathy-driven suffering, interpersonal conflict, distress at environmental change, helplessness and the clinical anxiety symptoms. The generation watching their homes and futures change, alongside the usual day to day stresses humanity faces, pose threat to a person’s psychological stability.  

Eco-Guilt can be depicted as the moral mirror, categorised by feelings such as prophetic responsibility (a drive to act) all the way to guilt for one’s own existence. The nature of guilt at the fate of our environment both motivates and paralyses, it is adaptive or it is corrosive.

Eco-Grief is the loss we didn’t expect to feel, mourning that wasn’t anticipated. This can be catalysed by the loss of the physical environment, the change that’s already happened, or the anticipation of the future losses, grieving something that hasn’t even happened yet. The connection to home and identity being lost and out of autonomous control.

 And Eco-Coping, the more hopeful, resolution focused aspect. Research also revealed the coping mechanisms, how people are responding. As with any traumatic event, sometimes denial or the ability to drown out the negative is a person’s first route, but some communities are being more supportive and individuals engaging in active problem solving where coping isn’t survival, but preparing for action.

Why this matters for everyone:

Climate change has the ability to affect everyone, especially for the working generations, and emotions shape behaviour far more intrinsically than facts do. Adaptive coping is not simply emotional, it’s action-oriented and some emotional responses facilitate change where other stall it. Without understanding the human experience behind these changes, effective solutions cannot be designed.

How are these emotions going to shape the future generations? What kind of support can be put in place to reduce maladaptive coping mechanisms? How will this effect people in daily life that is not concerning climate change directly?

As with most situational psychological changes, the more impactful, the higher the tendency to drip into other non-relevant areas of life. As managers, leaders and coaches, understanding the impact of negative emotion on a person’s psychological wellbeing is the first step towards understanding how best to support, and climate sensitivity is no different. Perhaps the real climate challenge is not just related to reducing emissions, but learning how to live with our emotions that positively evokes want for action.

From the lens of depth psychology, this extends even deeper; eco emotions are not just reactions to external events as they happen, but are expressions of the collective psyche responding to a rupture in meaning, of expectation and stability. Anxiety, guilt and grief emerge when other systems begin to collapse; those routed in control and progress. The unconscious is aware that the life that is known will no longer be viable, and when this narrative is resisted by the conscious, it causes a rift.  Eco-anxiety, then, becomes a signal, a  demand, created by the shadow wanting integration. It does not want to be silenced. When grief surfaces for a lost way of life it mirrors archetypal mourning, the death of old identities and reluctance to create a new one. When ignored, these emotions become the less active of the coping mechanisms; paralysis, unsure what to do, denial of the inevitable. When engaged, these emotions catalyse individuation (acceptance of all parts of the self), not just at the individual level, but for people as a collective. The real question is not how to erase these feelings, but how to respond to them and understand what they are trying to initiate within us.

For the full research paper published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022, find the link here: Identifying Types of Eco-Anxiety, Eco-Guilt, Eco-Grief, and Eco-Coping in a Climate-Sensitive Population: A Qualitative Study

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