Feeling worried about the climate? You’re not alone
The summer’s weather has been rather dramatic, including frequent heat wave warnings in Pittsburgh, deadly oods in Texas and smokey skies from wildres burning across Canada.
As extreme weather events continue, if you’ve found yourself anxious about the climate, you’re not alone.
The American Psychological Association conducts quarterly surveys about what is worrying American adults. Their newest data, released in June, found that our warming climate is weighing on many minds — more, even, than articial intelligence and border security.
More than half of those polled — 58% — said they were anxious about climate change in the March survey, with the same proportion worried about the government’s response to it.
Was this anxiety overwhelming enough to impact mental health, the 2,000 respondents were asked? “Yes,” 55% reported.
For climate professionals, thinking about climate change is not only a source of worry. It’s a job. Pittsburgh climate experts shared their tips for dealing with what psychologists have coined “eco-anxiety.”
Productive vs. unproductive anxiety
“Anxiety in general is really future based,” said Alicia Kaplan, medical director for the Center for Adult Anxiety and OCD at Allegheny Health Network. “It’s related to fear of the unknown, feelings of responsibility and lack of control.”
Natural disasters related to climate change — like oods, res and heat waves, which are hard to predict and prevent in the moment — check all of these boxes. So do warnings that these events could worsen.
The American Psychological Association study found that young adults under 34, as well as parents — those with more perceived stake in the future — were 10% likelier to worry about the climate than an average adult.
Future worry can be separated into two categories, Kaplan said. The rst is constructive worry, or what psychologists call “coping anxiety,” when worry is acknowledged and used to plan for a future challenge.
Then there’s a “consuming” kind of worry, said Kaplan, when anxiety causes a patient to expect catastrophe rather than productively plan for it.
“It can reach a threshold where it’s unhealthy, where it’s really interfering with quality of life,” Kaplan said. “When feeling excessively worried about the future, try to ground yourself in the moment. Be where your body is.”
In the context of climate change, Kaplan recommends being mindful that anxieties stay in the category of productive worry.
Kaplan categorizes worries about the climate by individual anxieties — about events that threaten oneself or loved ones, like a natural disaster — and collective ones — about the existential future of the planet.
Collective anxieties can, in fact, operate as a tool for healing: “Feelings of worry can be helped by talking to other people who share the same worries,” Kaplan said.
Focus on a shared future
“A key instinct for me is to stay focused on collaboration,” said Sarah Koenig, deputy director of sustainability at the Allegheny County Department of Sustainability,
She has spent her 18-year career in Pittsburgh organizing partnerships for conservation and climate groups. Putting her mental energy into shared rather than individual efforts helps her cope with personal anxieties about climate change.
Doron Cohen, a professor of behavioral psychology at Carnegie Melon University, studies how incentives, feedback and learning inuence behavior, including climate‑related decisions.
“I try to study small solutions that might help, as part of bigger pushes,” he said. “I know my own efforts will not solve anything, but I hope that at some point in the future, this will be useful.
Rachel Carson, the environmentalist for whom the Ninth Street Bridge is named, wrote something similar in her 1962 book “Silent Spring,” a key text in the modern environmental movement: “Here again, we are reminded that in nature, nothing exists alone.”
Engaging with information
Kaplan recommends consuming information consciously rather than passively — choosing when to watch the news or think about the climate instead of letting anxiety become constant background noise.
Especially for parents, she said, it’s important to have deliberate and agespeci discussions.
“From a behavioral science perspective,” said Cohen, “I’m skeptical of claims that teaching about climate change or acknowledging climate worries is unproductive. Kids are smart; they will learn about it in other ways and will probably experience its consequences in the near future directly, if they haven’t already.”
Ignoring information, he said, would likely be even less productive.