Climate change is real

We’ve been trying to deal with heatwaves, forest fires, the air pollution, cyclones and typhoons, earthquakes and tidal waves for years. The increase in pollution and its impact on health, the loss of biodiversity, the accumulation of rubbish in the oceans, water stress and water shortages, the overexploitation of natural resources, deforestation as well as the rising sea level, etc., people’s anxiety is quite understandable. Only 11 over 92 people think that we will overcome climate change.

“There is ecological mourning that young people have to do and as in all mourning there are several stages : denial, anger, helplessness in the face of how we can change things, depression sometimes and above all, huge guilt because young people are also somehow responsible, we all participate in the destruction of the planet. And then there is something else : young people feel betrayed by the governments which had made promises and didn't keep them. It also sometimes affects sleep and eating.”

The two major stress

“There are two major forms of suffering linked to climate change : first there is eco-anxiety, which is a prospective distress, that is to say that we imagine what will happen and it affects the daily life of young people. This suffering is becoming legitimate because climate change is materializing and getting closer and closer. So this eco-anxiety is a pre-traumatic stress, it means that it is anticipatory, it is the fear of what will happen.”

“The second major form of suffering is called solastalgia and that is retrospective distress, which means that we suffer from the loss or degradation of an environment that we have known before and that we risk to never find again. It is perhaps the syndrome "it was better before". So this, solastalgia, is post-traumatic stress. This means that disasters have already happened.”

Climate behavior

In a way, climate change anxiety could serve as a source of motivation to encourage behavioral engagement with the issue of climate change. On the other hand, climate anxiety could serve as a source of eco-paralysis : inhibiting people from taking effective actions.

Our survey shows that teens feel like governments aren’t doing enough to avoid climate disasters :

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