By Ariel Kroon, of the podcast Solarpunk Presents
Actually confronting the reality of climate catastrophe can look a lot like the 7 stages of grief*:
When I first started studying literature with a critical eye to how the environment showed up in it (aka ecocriticism) in 2014, climate psychology was not a thing. Not, mind you, that I did an extensive search for it, but I think that I can pretty safely assume that, since traditional and online media weren’t even talking about climate change, the concept of climate grief hadn’t taken hold yet in the professional community of therapists and psychologists.
Stage One: Denial and Shock
We’re all familiar with this method of ignoring the problem and hoping that it goes away. I’m very sure that readers can think of a specific person in their life (or perhaps even in politics) who is a climate change denialist. Even when presented with shocking evidence, like the drowning of Tuvalu or the massive warming in the arctic, some people just buckle down harder on their wrongheaded view of reality. Because climate change does not fit into the way reality has been represented to us for years.
Writer Amitav Ghosh identifies a phenomenon in literary fiction’s avoidance of talking about climate change or weather events at all. He talks specifically about literary fiction as opposed to genre fiction like science fiction or urban fantasy, and he observes that any writing that talks about the climate automatically gets lumped into a genre, where it can be safely ignored as “not real.”
After all, we’ve been trained on narratives for the screen like Waterworldand The Day After Tomorrow and Fury Roadand the other films in the Mad Max franchise that make climate change (and our reactions to living with it) spectacular and so over the top that we don’t take it seriously as something that could be—and is—happening to us. Apocalypses, after all, are generally thought to be sudden and violent and cataclysmic, not creeping and slow. We recognize the mushroom cloud and the tsunami as apocalyptic, but we don’t really interpret radiation sickness or ocean acidification in the same way.
Thus, climate change just isn’t part of the reality that’s been reflected back to us in our cultural narratives for centuries. Many activists, though, believe scientific data and empathize with those who are most affected by climate disaster, and so move through the shock of first contact with this different reality and realize that this is how we live now. However, that tends to lead people straight into stage two…
Stage Two: Guilt and Pain
Are you familiar with the concept of the carbon footprint? This idea, that each individual leaves behind an indelible mark of pollution on the world, in a shape unique to their being, depending on their personal choices. In this framework, conscientious individuals can easily be led to believe that the fate of the world rests on their shoulders alone: the pollution that leads to climate change is suggested by this phrase to be an individual burden. The idea of a carbon footprint convinces us that every choice we make can either contribute to, or take away from, this footprint – meanwhile, millions of sea creatures die due to rapidly acidifying oceans, which is probably your fault for not choosing that Uber Green ride, you unfeeling monster. Good God, don’t you care about the climate?!
Doesn’t feel great, eh. This phrase was deliberately coined by British oil giant BP in 2000, as part of a marketing campaign aimed at the American public, to convince them that the production of heat-trapping pollutants causing climate change was not, in fact, the fault of the producers of fossil fuel, but the fault of those poor schmucks forced to use it. Which was (and still is) basically everyone. As Mark Kaufman writes, “The company unveiled its ‘carbon footprint calculator’ in 2004 so one could assess how their normal daily life — going to work, buying food, and (gasp) traveling — is largely responsible for heating the globe.”
Nowadays, the term “carbon footprint” is everywhere, uncritically repeated by oil companies, politicians, outdoorsy brands, climate activists, and everyday people just trying to help each other out to help the planet. The result of becoming aware of the problem of climate change, however, is the immediate assumption of personal guilt, accompanied by the pain and angst this causes. There are so many good-hearted individuals who have donned the hair shirt of the carbon footprint and flog themselves with the rising statistics of global warming. This is an outcome that was deliberately crafted. It can also be painful to realize just how successful this campaign was at shifting the global mindset about global warming … not towards anything productive, but inward, to breed self-hatred.
A lot of climate fiction that dwells on our cumulative sins against the environment tends to be stuck in this stage – these are environmental fictions that toe the line between literary and genre, and don’t really offer any practical guidance for individuals, but the best ones do tend to make readers think. They’re often called jeremiads, or fiction that contains a preachy message or warning about what will happen “if this goes on.” I don’t think it’s bad to enjoy this kind of fiction but it’s not very constructive – it reflects back to us humanity’s culpability in creating the conditions that have lead to climate catastrophe, and while it’s true that the oil companies who got us into this mess were created and are staffed and chaired by human beings, it’s not at all a reflection of reality to imply that every single person is equally responsible for the mess we are in.
Stage Three: Anger and Bargaining
This is probably the most unpleasant stage of coping with climate change; it’s unpleasant for the person going through it as well as for the people around them. The hostility of many people towards activist groups such as Extinction Rebellion, GreenPeace, and indigenous environmental activists fighting for their homelands can be sourced to this – because punching climate change in the face isn’t an option, environmental activists become handy scapegoats, especially when they are directly disturbing the status quo, such as through actions like blocking traffic, or pipelines. They seem to offer themselves as avatars with whom others can reason, argue, and even fight, even though you average environmental activist is more preoccupied with their own struggles and does not need to deal with other humans’ emotions.
It is really awful – and downright ontologically frightening – to be rendered so helpless in the face of such large-scale detrimental change. The hyperobject that is climate change doesn’t notice the efforts put into sorting recycling, the trees planted, the plastic avoided, in order to play favourites and somehow not affect those who try these methods of bargaining.
Stage Four: Depression, Reflection, and Loneliness
Philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined the word “solastalgia” in 2003, to define a sense of distress about the lived experience of environmental change – he calls it “the homesickness you have while you are still home.” For example, the absence of monarch butterflies in the field near your house when in your childhood they were all over the place, or the empty space where the forest was when you drive past, since the trees have either been logged or burned down. A lot of people who are new to environmentalism often feel like they’re the only ones who care about specific issues such as the deforestation in their area, or farming runoff into their river, or decline in birds around where they live.
Speaking to others about climate grief or anxiety can cause them to either downplay your fears, deny them outright, and even get angry when you try to bring up the subject. As a result, a lot of people dealing with these emotions feel isolated and lonely, as if they are the only ones who can fathom the precariousness or outright danger of their situation as human beings living on this earth with deforestation, pollution, fossil fuel extraction, and a myriad of other detrimental processes happening minute-by-minute.
Stage Five: The Upward Turn
Darkness cannot exist without light; it might be a reminder that there is wonder in the world – a baby laughing, an animal learning to walk, a majestic mountaintop view – or remembering the love and support of friends and/or family that puts you on a path leading out of introspection or anger, or other strong emotions. Noticing that there are others who wrestle with climate anxiety/grief might also be a turning point, observing that there are other people who have gone through this “dark night of the soul” and come out the other side, and seem intact.
Perhaps that light is firelight, however. Connecting with others who are angered by the state of the world, who burn at the injustice of the neoliberal downloading of responsibility for climate change onto the shoulders of individuals, who channel their rage into righteous fury to defend the planet… that can be very cathartic. Rage, even when constructive, is not very sustainable over the long-term, but it is a powerful first step towards feeling emotions that prompt you towards action, instead of turning further towards helplessness.
Stage Six: Reconstruction and Working Through
Often, this involves literal action: it is a proven phenomenon that people feel less helpless about climate change when they are actively contributing to mitigating it, even in a small way. I like to think of “Reconstruction” referring to the re-construction of a sense of self, as a human who is capable of helping, and not just harming. Recognizing that one is caught up in a network of social norms that rely on pollutant-causing and emissions-heavy methods of, say, transport, can also be helpful: you cannot help the conditions you were born under, no more than you can choose what happens to you when you die. The rhetorical spin of the “climate footprint” can no longer exercise its manipulative power over you, now that you know the truth of it. All you can do is the best you can with the tools that you have.
This stage, by the way, varies in length by individual. All these stages do, but it is perhaps the most important to stress the variation during this one – everyone copes differently with information, especially emotionally-fraught or extremely heavy realities and their personal implications, such as those stemming from climate change. Re-construction of the self, or of a worldview, can be a very lengthy process, involving grief at the passing away of the old, and embrace of the new can take what may seem to be a very long time.
Stage Seven: Acceptance and Hope
In my opinion, I think this should be called “acceptance OR hope.” There are many people who fight for a better future despite climate change who do not have any hope at all that the climate crisis can be somehow avoided or stopped. These people have accepted that the change to our climate is catastrophic, but just because they themselves cannot feel hopeful about the fate of the planet does not mean they do not care to make the world a better place for the people around them and future generations.
There are also those who have found within them a wellspring of hope, because they are hopeful about humanity’s resilience, or ingenuity, or capability of survival. They may be hopeful about the continued existence of a certain animal, or insect, or plant. Perhaps by their actions, they are able to instill hope in others that allows them to live with the disasters caused by climate catastrophe and to rise again in their aftermath, stronger for having the example of those who know just how terribly degraded earth’s systems have become and continue to be, but choose to keep trying to make the world a better place.
Conclusion
The site Regain.us, which is operated by the psychologist network BetterHelp, is focused on these seven stages of grief as a way to deal with the loss of a loved one. Darby Faubion, in the little blurb that goes with stage seven, states that “It’s important to note that accepting a loss does not mean pretending as though it never occurred. It also does not mean instant happiness. However, it is an opportunity to deal with the reality of what has happened and learn ways of moving forward.” It’s also not a concrete end-stage – the thing about these seven stages is that they don’t progress in a neat arc; sometimes, we skip wildly around from one to four to six and back to three… for some, there isn’t an end to it, either. And that’s okay.
Accepting that maybe, just maybe, life on earth will never be the same due to climate change is a big ask for many people. And yet, there are many who have been able to adjust their way of thinking to fit the new reality we have created for ourselves and are not discouraged in their efforts to make the world a better place. This reality isn’t a lonely place of despair at all. It’s one of community, care for the earth and our neighbours, and hope.
This was adapted from a virtual talk that I gave about four years ago at a science fiction convention, in part with Holly Schofield.
*Yes, I know Elizabeth Kubler-Ross started with only four stages, but there have been a LOT of variations on the theme since then.
About the Author
Ariel Kroon is a scholar of crisis (especially as expressed in western post-apocalyptic science fiction), a recovering PhD graduate, a part-time research assistant, thinker of thoughts, and one half of Solarpunk Presents podcast.
You can find her academic and non-scholarly writing at her website, arielkroon.ca, or connect with her @arielkroon@wandering.shop.