I have the solution to climate crisis anxiety – radical optimism

Unthinkably serious discourse about the planet often leaves us feeling stressed and overwhelmed

‘The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research commissioned a study which found that fear doesn’t motivate people to engage in climate action’ (Getty Images/iStockPhoto)

The past year was hard enough, even before Nasa announced it was the hottest year on record. Discussion of the climate crisis is often dominated by terrifying statistics that we see on the news and share on social media. And it can often leave us wanting to stick our head in the sand, because we have a sense that it’s simply too big a problem for us to tackle.

The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research commissioned a study which found that fear doesn’t motivate people to engage in climate action. So, how can we combat the pessimism and hopelessness we are inundated with?

In an op-ed for Time magazine, Guillermo Del Toro wrote that optimism is “radical”. “It is the hard choice, the brave choice,” he said. “And it is, it seems to me, most needed now, in the face of despair.” This seemed like a philosophy I could subscribe to, so I decided to ask experts how we can practically embrace optimism to counter climate anxiety.

First of all, Liz Jensen, novelist and co-founder of Extinction Rebellion Writers Rebel reassured me that it wasn’t unusual to want to run away when confronted with a mammoth problem.

“We are right to feel climate anxiety,” she said. “It’s not an illness that we should avoid: it’s a normal reaction to a frightening situation. It may sound odd, but you can start by looking after yourself. By that I mean taking a long, compassionate look at where you are in life, and picture the kind of world you’d like your children and grandchildren to grow up in.”

Like Jensen, I see signs of change everywhere, thanks to the pandemic. We’re all examining ourselves more closely – and making personal choices than can have a knock-on effect to the world around us: such as eating less meat, flying less, avoiding plastic and spending time discovering nature.

And noticing the “small” things has got me thinking about the stories we tell each other, and how if we want to embrace optimism, we must change the current narrative.

I asked Alex Lockwood, senior lecturer at Sunderland University, what stories we should be telling about the climate, and how we can take action.

“I think it’s stories that are led by fairness or justice, that tap into a sense of the kinds of community that we want to build,” he said. “Don’t sit back and wait for other people to do it – do it yourself: get involved with a group, whether that be a local group, a foodbank, [or] a volunteer garden.”

Yusra Munir, a mental health practitioner I posed the same question to, echoed this community-building message. “Being part of a community or group is a great way to keep optimistic and motivated as you can see what you’ve achieved together, for example how many trees have been planted,” she said.

One such organisation who does just that is Trees For Cities, which organises volunteers to plant trees in urban spaces. Their CEO, David Elliott, told me that bringing local communities together to help create green spaces, brings positive mental health and wellbeing benefits to the families, individuals and communities who want to take positive action towards tackling the climate crisis.

And I relate – simply by looking at the green spaces around me. It helps me realise that in the face of climate change, we can get so caught up in the damage we’ve done to the planet (as a species), that we forget to take a moment to look around and appreciate what is out there. But the psychological benefits of practicing optimism are vast.

Munir told me that a more technical way for better mental health is to change your way of thinking, using a process known as “cognitive reframing”. There are a number of ways to do this: one strategy is to choose one negative thought at a time and unpick it by asking if there is evidence to support it – and whether there is any evidence to refute it.

“Being optimistic increases resilience when coming up against something that seems impossible to solve,” she said. “Having hope and positivity for the future will in turn decrease anxiety and depression.”

It can also help to remember that whilst we have huge desire to save the planet, we cannot do it through individual action alone. Changes, as Jake Woodier at The Climate Coalition told me, have come about as a result of “everyday people taking action” – whether that’s through holding their representatives and corporations to account, or pushing for more ambitious climate policy.

Embracing radical optimism therefore seems to me like the perfect starting point to assuage our collective climate anxiety – and to help us all form a long-term commitment to climate action. It is a necessary first step to imagining new narratives for our environment – because there is no singular, perfect story to save humankind. And by becoming more optimistic, perhaps we can create our own.