The Best Way to Fight Climate Change
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Dear Community,
We’re a week past Earth Day and I wanted to address a topic very near and dear to me. Thank you for being here.
I was listening to a recent Smartless episode with Jon Hamm. He talked at one point about never imagining his career would collide with the interests he had as a kid. At the same time, he believed that things have a way of coming full circle when you authentically make decisions in your life.
My undergraduate degree was in Political Science. My favorite classes were Food Politics and Environmental Politics. Back in middle school, my AIM screen name was @innerhippie09 and I was a frequent shopper at the local thrift store. On my watchlist are typically documentaries about travel and farming.
Last week I got an email from the Michigan Clinicians on Climate Action to speak to them about what I’m seeing in the mental health field and if I could speak to a local reporter on their behalf. It was one of those moments where I paused and laughed. Things had, truly, come full circle.
I say all of this because climate change action requires each of us to show up as our authentic selves. It requires us to be living by our values, stay open to connection and have the space to notice opportunities to do something. When we are so burdened by our own day-to-day stressors we fail to see beyond the bubble in which we operate. When I connect to who I am, my deepest core values, and move with integrity then I am empowered to help save our futures. The tools to do this? Well, let’s dig in…
GRATITUDE
While I was in Arizona I visited the little town of Tubac. I was fortunate enough to get a spa treatment and afterward, my therapist took me to a courtyard and told me to just sit and stare at the tree for 15 minutes. Because it was another 15 minutes of peace and quiet, I happily obliged her.
Now, I’ve been known to hug trees. I love trees. I speak to them, thank them, pet their trunks, and crave their presence, so I wasn’t expecting anything profound to come from this mindful meditative experience. But as I sat there, I listened. I listened to what the tree had to say back to me. In her wise words, she told me, “just love me. Just love me and I will love you.”
There was a presence of tenderness in the exchange as I admired that tree. I’ve struggled deeply with eco-anxiety. While “nearly half of 18-34-year-olds say that stress about climate change affects their lives”, I didn’t know if everyone felt it like I did. Daily panic attacks. Despair. Cynicism. Burn out. For me too, it’s felt like anything that I alone am capable of doing is just simply not enough.
Scientists have actually named this feeling, called the pseudoinefficiency effect. We’re less willing to help on a small level when the problem feels so overwhelming. And there are so many small things you can do today that connect you more to the issue and make you more aware of your actions.
INNOVATION
One of my absolute favorite nuggets of wisdom during the last 2 years has been the idea that despair is a privilege. There are also strong arguments that eco-anxiety is disproportionally debilitating to white people.
People of Color and Native Americans have long been oppressed, marginalized, threatened, and up against their survival. Their future has never been certain. White people? Excluding our LGBTQI friends, most white people have not had to stare down the fragility of their future before until climate change has shown its cards. For most privileged people, climate change is the first time they feel hopeless, out of control, and oppressed. Climate change is ruining future dreams, plans, and ambitions. Climate change is not just in its pursuits, feels scary, cruel and affects us all.
I fall into this, for sure! I am privileged in that I do not worry about the survival of me or my family on a daily basis. I have my basic needs and safety. It’s been the first time in my life that I have a real villain resisting my hopes and dreams.
But marginalized populations know something that most privileged people do not: the power of resilience. They know not only the power but the practice of resilience. It is holding on to dear life your joys, pleasures, gratitudes, and hopes that keep resilient energy alive. In this, you can get out of fear, panic, and apathy and still carry on. For centuries, oppressed communities have had to tether their strength to these tenants of resiliency while living amongst omnipresent threats.
FEELS
The truth: when I am at my best, I care about things bigger than me and my immediate needs. When I am at my best, I can live into my values of freedom, integrity, and compassion and therefore put energy towards activities that reinforce these values. When I am at my best, I can love, be grateful, and choose joy. When I am at my best I am resilient.
The real antidote to climate change is healing ourselves first. When we can move beyond our egoic behaviors of fear, desire, pride, apathy, guilt, and anger then we can stop asking for something in return and stop only looking out for ourselves. When we turn to truth, courage, joy, and love for all things and humans, we just care more deeply about protecting this Earth, living aligned with that compassion, and want to save others from suffering too. When we are better humans, we care about climate justice and the impact this is having on all of us. We want to do more. It is the passion of a collective that creates big change against a big problem.
But it starts with each one of us individually. Stop being an asshole.
Heal yourself so you can help heal this world.
Click here to learn more about therapy for anxiety.
