Climate Anxiety - A Chat With Grist's Kate Yoder

In this Climate 21 podcast, I will showcase best practices and thought leadership by SAP, by our customers, by our partners and, by our competitors, if they're game, in climate emissions reductions. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast in your podcast app of choice, to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi everyone. Welcome to the climate 21 podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and with me on the show today, I have my special guest Kate. Kate, welcome to the podcast.

Would you like to introduce yourself?

And I think you think the same, right?

But instead of that, being like 90% of the coverage, it needs to be more like, 50 and 60 with the other 40% or more looking at, how do we actually address these problems. How do we take action on climate change? What is already happening that people aren't hearing about?

So I think that podcasts like yours and other efforts, like it are, you know, a really important piece of sort of changing this narrative so that people don't get just bogged down in doom and gloom and, you know, we've flow past the climate deadlines. And there's nothing that can be done because there still are so many things that can be done. So yeah.

And I gave a talk there and a woman came up to me afterwards, and she said, look, she has a 14 year old daughter. And she said, the daughter frequently breaks down in floods of tears crying because of the climate anxiety that she has. And she was looking for, you know, sources of good news that she could put in front of her daughter. I've read a lot about climate anxiety but this was the first time I'd been faced with it as an actual reality. Sure reality.

Have you come across stories like that yourself?

I know that, you know, researchers have looked at the broader mental health impacts of climate change, which range from, you know, like post-traumatic stress disorder after going through like a hurricane or a wildfire, these other, like, there's this really, really broad, range of mental health effects that don't get talked about as often as anxiety.

And I think there's not as much, professional agreement around what climate anxiety is, partially because it's this catchall term that, sort of encapsulates all the emotions that people feel when they're confronted with climate change. So that could be worry, fear, anger, grief, despair, obviously, you know, anxiety as well. And you know, a lot of researchers say that this is a completely reasonable, rational response. Like there's nothing wrong with you if you're feeling this way.

And I think that's a really important point to start with on climate anxiety, because, too often, we see mental health as a person's individual problem when climate anxiety is really linked to, government inaction and things like that. But the indications we have that this is happening more, for one, you know, I'm really interested in language and terminology.

So I sometimes track terms on Google search and, you know, we've seen over the past, two years, like a massive increase in Google searches. Last fall I wrote a piece and it had increased over 500% from the previous year. And then I looked again, you know, early this month and we saw like an even higher, like a staggering new high last month.

And I think this is really interesting because this shows that, people are grappling with climate anxiety, um, looking for like resources, looking for other people who are experiencing it. And it's a little different from, doing research on like Twitter or TikTok or Facebook or anything where people are posting, because it's not like they're not trying to signal anything. They're like earnestly looking for resources. You know what I mean?

So, and then the other thing is that there was a survey last year, that looked at, I think it was 10 countries worldwide. And it was really the biggest, study on climate anxiety in young people that we've seen. And it looked at teens and young adults and actually 45% of them said that they were, that climate anxiety was affecting their lives and their ability to function. Um, so yeah, that was, that was really high.

A lot of, I think it was more than half of, people who responded to the survey thought that humanity was doomed, at least to some degree, which is pretty depressing. And in general, you know, young people felt betrayed by their governments. They felt that, their concerns were often ignored and dismissed by adults.

So that was a study that got a lot of attention and I think sort of drew attention to like the huge numbers of this problem in a way that, you know, it hadn't really been studied that widely before. So I think that was surprising to a lot of people.

But I feel like it is a little bit different than nuclear war and that it's a bit of a slow burn where, you know, every year you're seeing more and more disasters and it's not, you know, a, I mean, I guess I don't know enough about nuclear war, but it seems more like it would be a concrete. You can, 100% attribute this event to nuclear war.

Whereas with climate change, you know, scientists look at the models and say like, well, you know, climate change made events like this 80% more likely or 40% or whatever the number is. So it's a little bit more abstract in that way, but it's also, you know, all encompassing sort of like a nuclear war. So

But I do think that that's sort of like, I don't know, it almost feels a little bit surface level to me for this problem that's so deep and complex. Like obviously more systematic solutions are needed here because the world as it's set up in right now, the world as it's set up right now, isn't, it doesn't make any of these things easy.

Like we don't have the right incentives to, have everyone switch to electric vehicles within 10 years or , you know, all of these things that would, address climate change are really bigger than an individual person. but you know, I do think that, Well, I guess there's sort of two directions. One is just that, you know, our healthcare is kind of poorly positioned to deal with these mental health impacts of climate change. And it really needs to, be reenvisioned to address that.

I mean, one thing that will make action more possible is people believing that it's possible. And so in that way, we need to change the narrative around. You know the balance of what people are hearing overall about climate change.

And within a very short space of time, my news feed on, on Twitter changed dramatically and I wasn't on Facebook anymore. And so the information that I started getting in changed. And that changed my outlook. So I wonder, is there any way that we can help people? Well, one of the things I'm doing is I'm trying to put out more positive stories on this podcast, but can we help people to change the way they're taking in information?

But then, you know, also we know that outrage spreads a lot on social media, really strong opinions, you know, it's like, no wonder we're living in such a polarized society. When the things we see the most of are like the farthest left or the, farthest right. And you know, we're not seeing as much middle ground or as, as many people who are like, well, I'm concerned about climate change, but I don't really know what to do about it.

Or I'm kind of standing on the sidelines right now and you know, wanting to do something, but really what can an individual do? So I think there's, , I think there's that sense of, in addition to, you know, journalists and editors, maybe wanting to cover, these like headlines about the terrible things that are happening. There's also this sense that on social media, maybe the right things aren't necessarily spreading.

And you know, I think it's important to note that that belief isn't grounded in climate science, you know, climate scientists say that every tiny increment of a degree matters. And, you know, there might be some, you know, effects of climate change that are irreversible or locked in, but that's not like a signal to give up. That's a signal to like save

And, the way that the economy has changed in the past decade has really, driven us away from the very worst impacts, like the price of renewables and, like the car industries, growing. Interests in electric vehicles and producing them. I mean, there's, I don't think we talk about enough that like the very worst, like uninhabitable earth, very worst scenarios are now looking a lot less likely than before.

And that's sort of a really difficult place to start because you know, our habits are so ingrained. and they, they can definitely change, but it's, gonna be a challenge for sure. and there's gonna be some growing pains, I think. But, I mean, overall, you know, what are growing pains compared to , you know what we're looking at? If we fail to make them

But what needs to happen is massive structural change at a societal level. And to my mind, the only way that that will happen is if politicians take action and mandate it happen, just do, would do with the, the traditional carrot and stick, uh, route where you give big incentives for change. Then you also put fines in place for non-compliance without something like that, we're not going to see the change that needs to happen happen. The good thing is that can happen.

The challenge is it hasn't happened. Really anywhere to date . So, but it can happen. I think I, I think, I think the, the, the big action that we should be taking is to vote, to vote for candidates who have the strongest climate record, or climate agenda.

It just hasn't happened to the larger degree that we need to actually see the pace of change that we want. Right. But even, you know, even with president Biden's election, even though, they've passed smaller, climate change related bills and they haven't obviously passed, build back better and the really ambitious climate plans that you know, anyone who cares about the climate was hoping that that would pass.

Um, you've still seen, changes in industry as a result of like these signals coming from the white house that like, you know, the car industry can't count on having, lax fuel efficiency standards for much longer or you know, I think there's kind of a, a sense where that carrot and stick can kind of become like a self-reinforcing feedback loop. As the industry sees things as more possible, then the governments feel like they can implement them. And then that drives further change.

So I do have hope that, you know, even if this doesn't happen all at once, it'll sort of start accelerating in the next decade. And I guess we'll see what happens with that.

Like what if we like warm summer days and climate change has been criticized for, being too neutral, like change isn't necessarily a bad thing. and. I think there is something to calling it a crisis or emergency, but I do think that's like a surface level change, in the way that we're talking about climate change and that it's more often says more about the speaker than like the reality.

There's been some studies and they show that, or at least the most recent study I saw showed that it didn't really make a big difference on readers. If an article said climate crisis or climate emergency. One small finding they did find was that articles that mentioned climate emergency were, perceived as less credible by audiences as if they were more biased.

So yeah, I do think that, climate change could use a rebrand, but it's difficult because whatever you say will sort of reach a different audience, right? Like if you say climate crisis, Climate justice, green new deal, like that's really activating or at least ,it has been maybe not at this current moment when activists are, I think, feeling a little bit disappointed. but that, you know, really speaks to progressives and marginalized groups.

But on the other hand, if you say those same terms to a Republican Senator, they might be like, I'm actually not going to pass this legislation. Whereas if you said something about extreme weather, And, you know, community resilience, they would be like, oh yeah, we have seen a lot more flooding. Maybe we should, you know, redesign our cities to , you know, so there's, there's these strange, strange dynamics that happen because climate change has been so politicized.

I think, and one thing that I do think would be helpful is if

And partly it's because I'm from a pacifist background is when people say the war on climate change, because it's like, we're not fighting the climate. We need to work with it. Like, the, climate's doing a good job. It's just that, you know, we're pumping it full of these things that are making a little bit crueler to us a lot, bit crueler to us.

And I don't know if that's good or bad, but it is an effect that happens.

And, you know, if you look back at, the history of how corporations have of addressed environmental problems, they've often shifted the blame to individual people. And you can see this over kind of a range of things. The oldest one that I know about is when, cars were taking over the streets after carriages. The streets used to be shared by everyone, you know, pedestrians were walking and they probably weren't even seen as pedestrians.

Then they were just people, you know, but, what, they discovered once automobiles got on the road is that there were a lot of deaths of, people who were in the streets because cars were hitting them. And there was sort of this chaos. And in that moment, the car industry, said. They, they came up with this term jaywalking, which wasn't a thing up until then. And they like brought, they got the boy Scouts of America to like hand out, warnings. Are you a jaywalker?

And , they got these lovers of society to turn this into an individual problem. The problem wasn't the cars on the street, so that people were in the way and that they were crossing at the wrong places. And you see that around, you know, the idea of the, the carbon footprint, which I talked to, the professor who originally came up with the idea of an environmental footprint as sort of this bland thing.

And then gradually saw how, companies like BP were popularizing the phrase because they saw that,

Where it's instead of thinking like, wow, maybe we shouldn't be manufacturing all this plastic, you know, only 10% of which will ever be recycled according to our research. Maybe we shouldn't be manufacturing this and blaming people for, you know, littering when most of it's gonna end up in the dump or, the oceans anyway. And so I, I found that these, you know, articles really resonated with people and they were interested, interested in them. I think, because we don't often.

Think really about those frames. It's just sort of taken for granted that, you know, our carbon footprints are, you know, our individual responsibility and that we need to not litter. And it's like, yes, those, those have some degree of truth to them, but you know, there's a whole irresponsibility problem there in terms of who contributed to the crisis most.

I think it's, it's tempting to just point the finger at corporations and say, like fix this but you know, at the same time, they're operating in this world that is currently set up in a way that, you know, makes doing the right thing, really difficult. I mean, the profit motive, right. That's slowly changing around green issues, but it's, this shared question of like, how do we find ways to hold people accountable while still moving forward on this issue?

Because I think there's a sense of like the climate movement wants to be proven right. We wanna say like, I believe in science, but at the same time, like saying that what does that say about people who don't believe in science? Like you're kind of drawing divisions where maybe you don't need to, and you need to be asking questions.

So yeah, I think, I don't know really what the answer is, but I think there needs to be a change in how we talk about responsibility and environmental problems and that we really need to pick our priorities wisely.

So if it's, whether it's like convincing someone to vote or, you know, even changing your behavior, like I'm vegetarian. I love cooking incidentally. Like the people I live with also eat a lot of vegetarian meals. Um, , you know, there's this, there's this sort of sense.

I think that we should focus on our friends and our family before strangers, and just, stay away from, from belittling people who don't think like you do, because I'm not sure really what, what good that's gonna do at this point.

Thanks catch you all next time.