Climate Change and Mental Health

The speaker, Hanaleah, introduces her podcast "Ways to Save the World" and explains that it is for anyone concerned about the environment and wants to lead a more eco-friendly lifestyle. She discusses the connection between climate change and mental health, sharing her personal journey and research. Hanaleah emphasizes the need for continued climate education and meaningful activism. She also highlights the impact of climate change on teen mental health and the privilege in being able to worry about the future. The podcast aims to address climate-related mental health issues globally and acknowledges the unequal impact of these issues. Hey there, I'm Hanaleah, and I'm thrilled that you're here with me on the very first episode of Ways to Save the World. I've been dreaming and brainstorming and researching for this podcast for about six months, and I'm so excited to finally get recording. Make sure to follow the Ways to Save the World wherever you're listening, so that you can say that you were here with me from the beginning. Timestamps for this episode will be in the show notes, as well as links to many of the articles, books, and creators that I talk about. Before we get started, I want to talk about who this podcast is for. This podcast is for anyone who's ever watched a documentary in their science class about factory farming, or dwindling marine biodiversity, or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and try not to cry. This podcast is for anybody who reads headlines about record-breaking temperatures or deadly wildfires and goes back to scrolling Instagram to avoid that feeling of grief and dread for the future of our planet and the future of generations to come. This podcast is for anyone who wants to lead a more eco-friendly lifestyle that is simultaneously tempted by all the micro-trends that come across their For You page, and that one five-dollar top that is so cute but definitely made in a sweatshop. This podcast is for teens who want to learn more about climate issues from the perspective of another teen, in a way that isn't doomsday, but actually gives them ways that they can contribute to the movement. This podcast is for parents who want to understand more deeply about why their child is concerned or anxious or hopeless about the climate crisis, and learn how to help them both live with those feelings and turn them into meaningful action. And above all, this podcast is for anyone who cares about the Earth, its breathtaking nature, its miraculous animals, and our fellow humans. So if you related to any of that, I'm so glad that you're here with me, and this is going to be a great episode. So in today's episode, we are diving into the connection between climate change and mental health. Spoiler alert, there's a lot of connections, and I'm so excited to share what I've learned. I'm going to be combining my personal journey with climate change, as well as hours of research I've done. To be completely honest, in this moment, now that I'm actually sitting down to record this episode, I'm not feeling my best. It's a sunny day, and I'm drinking ginger beer right now, but I've also just been rejected from a climate leadership board that I spent hours applying and interviewing for. I keep repeating the phrase, what is meant to be, will be, but to be honest, your girl is in a bit of her climate activism reputation era. So how did I get to this point, sitting on the floor and crying about a rejection email about an issue I never thought I'd want to devote my life to? Let's go back to elementary school. I'm eight, sitting on the floor of the gym amidst my restless and squirming peers, watching a presentation in which a gray-haired husband and wife teach us about the importance of saving water. I still remember the song, H2O, go with the flow. Growing up and watching countless versions of this presentation over the years made me kind of annoyed with the whole reduce your carbon footprint thing. My younger self was like, fuck you, I'm going to keep the water on while I brush my teeth. I don't even care. And I'm not going to get too into it right now, but this is a real problem with climate education. From a young age, we were taught that it is our personal responsibility to remedy the climate crisis through our actions, like turning off the lights and eating less meat, and not that climate change is largely caused by huge corporations that value profit over the planet, as well as our capitalist, consumerist culture and the waste that it causes. I'm not saying that we all don't have a personal responsibility to be conscious of the resources that we're using and wasting, because we do, but throwing that information at children without reminding them that the climate crisis is not their fault and was caused by these larger systems is unhelpful, especially if there's just one presentation every few months and not a continued discussion that promotes finding meaningful activism for them. I grew out of this annoyance with what the adults were telling me about climate change when I was at a river that my family visits every summer. Only it wasn't a river anymore, it was a dry creek bed. In the drought of 2017, the once rushing river had been reduced to stagnant pools along the banks. I looked around and thought, is this climate change? Has it reached us even here? I guess I just had sort of associated climate change as something far off and separate from myself, but seeing it impacting a place I love was really a wake-up call for me. Let's fast-forward to fifth grade. My class was working on projects to address issues created or exacerbated by climate change. Finally, some productive and meaningful climate education, yay! My friend was researching and found a heartbreaking statistic. If we continue the current trend, climate change will be irreversible after 12 years. Irreversible. I remember feeling a tightness in my throat and a knot at the pit of my belly. This was the first time I felt this way, my anxiety and fear and sadness manifesting as a physical ache in my body. The feeling visits me almost every day now. Sitting at the edge of a lake in the Sierras with my dad when I was 13, I confess that I don't know how to live with myself if I didn't save the earth from climate change. I was in middle school and my cynicism about the world was just armor that was hiding a deep empathy. My dad told me that I can make the world a better place just through my films and my writing, and that the world needs more of the beauty created by artists. I was unconvinced. It wouldn't be enough. I needed to scream to make every selfish politician and big oil executive know just how much they were hurting me and the nature and animals I loved. I couldn't imagine going to college and writing film anymore when the coral reefs were dying, when the world desperately needed a revolutionary. I'm 15 now and my issue is that I don't do anything with this rage. I let it fester and it makes me depressed and irritable and then I scroll on social media to numb it. Being a student also means that I'm constantly racing to keep up with assignments and extracurriculars and I have very little time to devote to turning this passion into action. Ways to save the world is my first step in becoming the activist I want more than anything to be. In researching issues I'm passionate about and finding ways to make a difference, I'm not only, hopefully, inspiring and informing you, the listener, but I'm motivating myself to keep going. That's why I'm so glad that you are here with me right now, so we can support each other on our climate journeys. This year, my humanities teacher had the class write about issues that can impact the mental health of teens. I chose to write my essay about how climate change impacts teen mental health. Since none of my friends could really relate to what I was feeling, I was desperate to find some sort of study, scientific evidence or article that could prove that what I was feeling wasn't dramatic and abnormal and I did find it. In my research, I found a shocking study by Stanford scientists that aimed to uncover the true scope of this little acknowledged challenge that many youth face. The study interviewed 10,000 youth in 10 different countries and found that three-quarters of youth felt that future is frightening. Half said that they experienced climate anxiety to a degree that impacts their daily lives and a quarter said that they had fears about having children due to the climate crisis. And for me, this study proved that climate change is a genuine risk to the mental health of teens. It wasn't something that just I was dealing with. And so as to why teens can be even more vulnerable to climate-triggered mental health issues than adults, one can draw from previous knowledge of the teenage brain and its susceptibility to any mental health issue. Linda Speer states in the Behavioral Neuroscience of Adolescence that, indeed, adolescence is a time of greatest risk for the emergence of psychological disorders ranging from a marked rise in the incidence of depression, anxiety and conduct disorders. End quote. Despite all this evidence that points to the idea that teenagers are some of the most at-risk individuals in our society for climate-related mental health issues, I think it's still a really understudied area. I wanted this podcast to include people from all walks of life. So we're going to be looking at climate anxiety and eco-grief, not just in teenagers or in the United States, but in everybody, because we must address climate-related mental health issues just like climate change, as a global issue that affects us all. That being said, just like climate change, these mental health issues don't affect everyone equally. One of the most necessary parts of this conversation is recognizing my privilege due to me being white and middle-class in America and how that impacts my relationship with climate change. So I hope that I'm saying this name right, but Sarah Jacquet-Wright is a professor of environmental studies at Humboldt State University and the author of A Fueled Guide to Climate Anxiety, How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet, which is a book I have not read yet, but I have heard about and it's gotten great reviews and it's definitely on my to-be-read list. So in an interview with A.J. Dallinger for a Mike magazine article titled The Connection Between Climate Anxiety and White Fragility, she says, if your present is secure and you're worried about the future, then that is inherently a form of privilege. Let me say that again. If your present is secure and you're worried about the future, then that is inherently a form of privilege. Because there are millions of people who have been displaced or have contracted illnesses or even have lost loved ones due to the climate crisis. And even though we may feel some of the impacts of the climate crisis, like rising temperatures, abnormal weather, drought and flooding, like I felt in the river with my family, and the loss of species, the reality is that most of us aren't on the front lines of the climate crisis, meaning that we're able to continue living without the climate crisis destroying our homes and livelihoods or threatening to, which is the reality for many. If you live in America or in another wealthy country, then you also have the privilege of a government that can provide funds and leadership to bounce back after climate disasters, which many communities can't do. An example of this is the East African drought, which is an 18-month drought triggered by the El Nino and hotter temperatures due to climate change. I think it's still happening today. I'm not sure. I have to research this a little more. Since East Africa has less industrialization away from major cities, the lack of wells and irrigation can mean that many nomadic pastoralists who have once followed the movement of their animals with the changing seasons find their livestock dying of thirst and their families left without a food source. So if this same drought had hit the United States or anywhere else, or pretty much anywhere else in the industrialized global north, our wealth and resources could shield us from the brunt of it. We have AC. Most of us aren't depending on livestock or animals to keep us alive. We're a lot more removed from nature, and therefore, we're shielded. We're not on the front lines of climate change like these people in East Africa are. As an article by Generation Climate Europe puts it, the poorest countries in the world, whilst registering the lowest industrial pollution levels, are the most susceptible to damage produced by climate change. Sarah Duquette-Ray also talks about climate justice and white fragility in an article for Scientific American titled, Climate Anxiety is an Overwhelmingly White Phenomenon. She says, quote, the white response to climate change is literally suffocating to people of color. Climate change can operate like white fragility, sucking up all the oxygen in the room and devoting resources to appeasing the dominant group. As climate refugees are framed as a climate security threat, will the climate anxious recognize their role in displacing people from around the globe? Will they be able to see their own fates tied to the fates of the dispossessed? Or will they hoard resources, limit the rights of the most affected, and seek to save only their own, deluded that this xenophobic strategy will save them? How can we make sure that climate anxiety is harnessed for climate justice? End quote. This was such a powerful paragraph, powerful statement for me. And one thing it reminded me of, I know that this is only something that is really occurring in the ultra-rich, but it's also sort of a metaphor or symbolizing for what a lot of really privileged people are feeling. It reminded me of a video essay about doomsday bunkers for the ultra-rich. So basically these really ultra-rich people, the top 1% of the 1%, are buying these billion dollar bunkers, stashing them with food supplies and seeds and sprouts, so that if there's a climate disaster and some other disaster, they'll be able to survive. And this represents how a lot of privileged white people in America are thinking about the climate crisis. Like, how can I preserve my own family, my own wealth, instead of addressing it as a global issue? How can we as an earth, a world, as the human race, find solutions to make this a global issue? How can we as the human race find solutions to make this better and easier for all of us? So Hop Hopkins of the Sierra Club reinstates this, quote, we will never survive the climate crisis without ending white supremacy. You can't have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can't have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can't have disposable people without racism, end quote. So if you don't know what sacrifice zones were, like I did, or you can't guess from the name, the Climate Reality Project defines them as places where fence line communities or residents, usually low income families and people of color, live in proximity to polluting industries or military bases that expose them to all kinds of dangerous chemicals and other environmental threats. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, many communities adjacent to power plants, petrochemical plants, and other sources of pollution are African Americans or other people of color. So this is due to historical redlining, so that's sellers segregating neighborhoods, often only letting white people buy houses in desirable areas, and other racially biased housing practices. Living in such proximity to sources of pollution can be detrimental to physical health. Racial Disparities in Climate Change, an article by Princeton Student Climate Initiative, says that approximately 13.4% of African American children suffer from asthma compared to only 7.3% of white children, which is a big difference. Another population of people who are more at risk of climate trigger mental health issues are people who already struggle from underlying mental health issues. As you can imagine, climate change is only going to make your depression, anxiety, or mood swings worse. This affects those with depressive and anxious tendencies, as well as people with high empathy or highly sensitive persons. So in terms of sex, girls and women are more vulnerable to mental health issues triggered or exacerbated by climate change. So the National Center for PTSD says that findings indicate that women are at a greater risk for developing PTSD than men, even when they're exposed to similar types of trauma. In many parts of the world, women can be more impacted by climate change than men. In many parts of the world, women can be more impacted by climate disasters and due to their lack of resources, since they tend to be the caretakers of their families. According to the BBC, the UN figures that 80% of people displaced by climate change are women. Which is startling. 80%. 80%. Wow. And then, so although this 50% of the population is more at risk of climate change and its consequences, the average representation of women in national and global climate negotiating bodies is below 30%. While women are the most impacted by climate change, we also have the least say in, you know, the solutions for it. So if I wanted you to get one thing from this podcast so far, it's that climate justice is racial justice is gender justice. They're all very deeply intertwined. And part of my goal for this podcast going forward is for me to more deeply understand how each of these systems of oppression and more, because there are so many different systems of oppression that affect and are affected by climate change, how all of these systems influence each other and create the reality of our planet that we are experiencing today. So climate related mental health issues can look different for every person who experiences them. But some common examples are anxiety, depression, anger, and fear of the future. It's important to know that whatever these you're experiencing, it's completely normal and it's a sign of your empathy and humanity for the state of the world. So learned helplessness is another lesser known but very common struggle. According to the website Oxford Languages, learned helplessness is, quote, a condition in which a person has a sense of powerlessness arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to exceed. It is thought to be one of the underlying causes of depression, end quote. After being bombarded by so much doomsday news about the worsening climate, sometimes we just feel paralyzed. So learned helplessness is one coping mechanism. It's sort of the freeze and the fight, flight, or freeze. And then another method of coping that some people use is emotionally distancing themselves from the source of their stress. So this can look like being in denial of climate change, avoiding reading or listening to the news altogether about climate change, or avoiding thinking about it. And I've done this a lot when I just don't want to deal with the emotions that come up for me around climate change. A book that I've been reading called Generation Dread by Britt Ray says that, quote, but defending against this anxiety this way eventually stops working and the distress reemerges, leaving individuals not only defenseless but with the additional burden of shame and a sense of inadequacy for not being able to smother it, end quote. In Generation Dread, Britt Ray talks about disavowal, a kind of soft denial. Quote, disavowal is like having one eye open and one eye closed at the same time. Consider this. We believe the science, understand the risks, and are concerned about the system's collapse. And then in equal measure, we play down the threat so we can continue to live out our lives according to our desires, end quote. And I've noticed this so much around me and my friends and people who've said, oh, it's not that big of a deal, and in myself. So, like, for example, when I was venting to my eighth grade film teacher about how I was feeling hopeless about the climate crisis, he was like, oh, yeah, that's so valid. And it's also important to remember of all the amazing people and companies that are creating new solutions every day. We're making so much progress. This statement is true in and of itself. It's really good to remember how much work people are doing to solve the climate crisis. But I used it in a negative way because I was like, oh, yeah, I need to stop worrying about this. I sort of used it as like a, I don't need to worry about this anymore. I sort of used it as an excuse to stop thinking about climate change, to ignore my feelings about it. This was making me a lot less inclined to take action on behalf of my climate anxiety. And then there's some people also who choose to cope with their passionate emotions regarding climate change by throwing themselves into action. This is called problem-focused coping, which is often very positive and can make the individual find meaning in their eco-anxiety or climate grief. The Frontier article I mentioned before notices a flaw in this coping mechanism since, quote, it can leave the individual frustrated by the limits of their own ability and are unable to rid themselves of their anxiety and negative emotions surrounding climate change, end quote. So while problem-focused coping can spark action, it should not be your only method of coping. Because if you're, you know, it's almost like there's like internal activism, external activism, and problem-focused coping is external activism. I need to be fixing this and fixing this, which is so great. It's so much, I think it's better than denial. But also ignores the work you have to do within yourself to deal with your emotions, to learn how to live with them, to learn how to take a step back. It can cause burnout. It can cause not taking enough time for other things in life. So it's all about balance, you know, and one way of describing this balance, a term is called meaning-focused coping. So in the article Eco-Anxiety in Children, a Scoping Review of the Mental Health Impacts of Awareness of Climate Change by Frontiers Media, the authors describe this method of coping as, quote, taking strength from individual actions and climate beliefs while trusting that other societal actions are also doing their part, end quote. So in other words, meaningful coping is being educated about what's going on in the world and participating in climate action whilst understanding that it is okay to step back and realize that there are so many other people who are also taking action and it just isn't all up to you to save the world, like I felt for a while, like I need to save the world, I need to be here and I want to keep that mindset because it's going to motivate me but I also don't want it to ruin me out. So that's where meaning-focused coping comes in. In Generation Dread, Britt Ray also talks about the potency of public mourning. She writes, quote, by channeling our private grief into the public work of mourning, we can render ecological losses visible, point out the root cause from spoiled farms to vanishing species into the realm of mattering, end quote. So I think when it comes down to it, what we choose to mourn is what we choose to value. So by mourning for the climate crisis, especially in a public way, we're not only processing this grief by turning it into action, saying, hey, we care about this issue and we as a community will mourn for it in solidarity. Britt Ray writes about a ritual called Remembrance Day for Lost Species, which activist Persephone Pearl helped build. Quote, the day has often been organized around the burning of symbolic body of a lost species that has made beforehand, end quote. So being involved in a movement of people who share a common goal, an idea, or having a community to grieve with about a crisis like climate change is crucial because it can help shift that flame of passion for the climate from burning ourselves up to lighting a torch with our friends and family that illuminates a version of a better future. That sounded really deep when I wrote in my notes there. So this is why I encourage every listener to find people who care about the earth as much as you do. If nobody in your friend group wants to talk about how overfishing leads to a lack of biodiversity, you know, like the documentary you watched in science, go to your school's eco club and make a new friend. If your family can't understand the passionate emotions you feel about the climate crisis, consider attending a rally or protest near you or email a local organization about how you can get involved. Chances are you're going to meet a lot of like-minded people in these spaces. So I realize that it's rarely easy for us to meet new people or attend an event you've never been to before. I, like most of us, have social anxiety and it took all of my willpower to introduce myself to the organizer of a youth climate event a few weeks ago. But I know that also to get anywhere on my activism journey, I have to push myself out of my comfort zone. Which is why I'm going to be doing both of the things I list above. I'm going to be finding out where my school's eco club is before because I've been avoiding that due to not, you know, due to like wanting to eat lunch with my friends. And I'm going to start researching climate protests in the area and hopefully attend my first ever protest sometime this month. So most of all, notice when you feel that spark of energy and passion. Is it when you're reading an article about climate smart urban planning or watching a documentary on reforestation? Is it when you come across a shocking statistic like, you know, climate change is irreversible in 12 years? Or is it when you were in the forest looking up at a pine and thinking, how can we care for this miraculous earth so that all future generations can enjoy it? And even more than that, notice when you were feeling a tightening in your chest, however grief, anxiety, fear, or sadness manifests in your body. Go toward this painful feeling instead of around it or away from it because this pain is a sign of your unique humanity and deep empathy. The world needs more people like you. People who are turning their rage and grief into fuel to create change. So before we go, I have a list of amazing resources to share with you. The great thing about this list is that it's collaborative. You can email me at waystosavetheworld.pod at gmail.com or DM me on Insta at waystosavetheworld underscore pod with any books, podcasts, films, websites, or organizations you love and think other listeners could learn from. Let's start with some Instagram accounts that I found super informative and inspiring. I don't really have any other social media like TikTok or Facebook or, I don't know, Snap right now, but I've been trying to use my Instagram page to inform me as much as possible so that when I'm scrolling, I can find something educational and that's going to leave me feeling like if that time was a little more productive than it would have been otherwise. So the first account that I've really been enjoying is, I hope I'm saying this right, Karishma Climate Girl, who has a ton of interesting Instagram reels. She covers so many topics related to climate change and I always feel smarter after watching her videos. All of these accounts will be linked in the show notes. So the next account is Climate Defiance and this is a youth-led group that is, quote, dedicated to using disruptive direct action to resist fossil fuels, end quote. That's their Instagram bio. And so they do this by interrupting big meetings with oil executives and leaders who are destroying the planet with their greed for profit. So these activists chant and hold up signs and draw the attention of the entire room and sometimes even the media. Like they got featured on CNN a couple weeks ago. So Climate Defiance is so inspiring to me because they're actually telling these awful politicians and executives and CEOs to go fuck themselves, which is like one of the most direct forms of activism, you know? Like they're actually telling the source of the problem why they need to change and informing everyone else in that room with them. So the last account I've recommended today is It's the Garbage Queen and I love watching her for her Good Climate News series. To balance out the despair that we can often feel after hearing climate news, focusing on solutions can be super positive and helpful and I definitely recommend following her. So moving on to YouTube channels, I 100% recommend Our Changing Climate, which has incredibly informative and visually appealing video essays. I love like, you know, the videos sort of, I don't know, it's very visually appealing to me and it makes me so much easier to watch when, you know, I like how the video is edited and made. So you can watch one of these videos in 20 minutes and immediately just feel more informed about the systems that are causing and exacerbating climate change. So finally, I recommend the book Generation Dread, Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety by Britt Rae. I hope I'm saying her name right. Oh my god. So this book shaped this episode like nothing else did. And the way that Britt Rae blends her vast knowledge of climate anxiety and her own experience with it, especially as it relates to her decision to have a child, really inspired me and it inspired me to, you know, add my own personal story about, you know, with climate change at the beginning. So you can find all of these resources in the episodes show notes. Thank you so much for listening. I'm so happy that you're here with me. And I'm so grateful that you're sticking with me as I stumble through making my very first podcast episode. So please follow Ways to Save the World wherever you're listening because there's so many amazing things that are coming to this podcast. And I'd love for you to be updated when I release my next podcast and hopefully find a consistent podcast release schedule. Thank you so much again for listening and have a beautiful day. Bye. Bye.