Feeling Doomed? How to Tackle Climate Anxiety

“We’re all doomed.” If you’ve ever thought this to yourself while looking down at the remnants of your paper straw floating in your plastic coffee cup (just me?), you may be experiencing climate anxiety. Climate feelings, like anxiety and grief, are on the rise all over the world. And researcher Britt Wray started feeling them herself when she was newly married and started thinking about having children. So she started to study these feelings to learn more about the roots of her climate anxiety, how common it was, and why learning to cope with it is an important step towards taking climate action.

Guest: Britt Wray

Calls to Action

• If you’re looking for climate related mental health treatment, the Climate Psychology Alliance has a directory of climate-aware therapists in North America and the UK
• If you’re looking to connect with others over climate anxiety, check out some Climate Cafe directories here and here, or search “my city + climate cafe” to find one near you. If you want to host your own Climate Cafe, here’s a discussion guide. The Good Grief Network and Climate Awakening also host virtual ways to connect.
• If you want to try some of the mindfulness techniques that Britt mentioned as a way of stretching your window of tolerance, check out the Free Mindfulness Project and Headspace
• If you want to check out Britt’s work on climate anxiety, you can subscribe to her substack Gen Dread or check out her book Generation Dread

Check out our Calls to Action archive for all of the actions we've recommended on the show. Send us your ideas or feedback with our Listener Mail Form. Sign up for our newsletter here. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

This episode of How to Save a Planet was produced by Anna Ladd. The rest of our reporting and producing team includes Kendra Pierre-Louis, Rachel Waldholz, Daniel Ackerman, Hannah Chinn, and Meg Driscoll. Our supervising producers are Katelyn Bogucki and Matt Shilts. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Sound design and mixing by Peter Leonard with original music from Peter Leonard and Emma Munger. Our fact checker for this episode was Stephanie Abramson. 

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