A Conversation on Hope, Despair, and Climate Action
Climate change is increasing the number and severity of natural disasters. In 2023, the United States had a record 28 weather and climate disasters that caused more than 1 billion dollars each in damages and had lasting and devastating impacts on communities. Experiencing a disaster takes a toll on people’s mental health. Fearing future disasters or climate change in general can also impact mental health.
To learn more, we spoke to two experts at the Washington State Department of Health who work on climate and health issues. Rad Cunningham is the manager of our Climate and Health section, which addresses health risks associated with climate change. Claire Grant is a Resilience and Preparedness Strategist in our emergency management office (the Office for Resilience and Health Security).
Interview edited for length and clarity.
How does climate change have a direct impact on our mental health?
Claire: Deaths due to natural disasters have been decreasing steadily in the United States. We’re getting better at preventing deaths. But the loss of economy and property is still so hard on people. Having a home destroyed is not easy for anyone, whether from fire, flood, or mudslide. It’s incredibly painful for people to have to deal with. Washington state is so diverse and beautiful, but it’s also prone to a diversity of natural disasters.
Rad: Climate change doesn’t create new risks. It just makes those risks more likely. Heat waves aren’t new. But having to respond to them every year is new.
Claire: Heat is the deadliest natural disaster in the United States. So, especially in the context of climate change and global warming, it is our biggest threat. But we have other worsening issues as a result of heat, like wildfires and smoke. Or flooding increasing in severity because of burn scars [areas where fire has burned trees and vegetation leaving land more prone to flooding and debris flow.] Our soil doesn’t hold water as well as it used to.
It’s happening more and more frequently. People in communities that experience more frequent disasters constantly have to change their lives and move because of natural disasters. Eastern Washington deals with fire season every year now. We didn’t really see that before. We now have to plan around natural disasters that are becoming more unpredictable. I think that is really taking its toll on people.
How can people reduce the mental health toll of climate disasters?
Claire: As individuals, we are often powerless in preventing disasters. That’s why it’s so important to be prepared. If people know what’s coming, they can better prepare by making sure they have extra food and water supplies and have their documents ready to go. But people can also prepare in the emotional sense, by recognizing that they live in an area that is more and more often impacted by wildfires, etc.
I wish I could prevent all wildfires. I would love to solve climate change for you. I cannot do that, but I can provide information on what to do if and when a climate disaster happens to make sure communities are in the best position possible to protect themselves and recover.
(See the end of this article for some relevant mental health resources.)
How does witnessing climate disasters or awareness of climate change affect people’s mental health? Especially considering that collective action and political will aren’t currently happening at the level needed.
Rad: Most people are “alarmed” or “concerned” about climate change. A majority of people might want to do something, and I don’t think people know that. I think it’s seen as a political issue, so people shy away from talking about it. And because they do that, they don’t find out how many people are concerned. So, there’s this combination of worry and isolation.
Claire: A mental health professional told me several years ago that your body doesn’t know the difference between bad news like severe flooding happening on the other side of the world, and a tiger running at you. All your body knows is that it’s perceiving a threat. And it affects your mental health to feel like you’re constantly under threat.
What are some things that people can do to reduce the mental health impact of more general climate change issues, like climate anxiety or despair?
Rad: I’m not a mental health professional, but I think climate despair is a kind of grief about the erosion of our quality of life and our planet. I’ve had family members die recently, and the grief books say the only way out is through. When you’re just saying, “We don’t want to get to 1.5 degrees, and here are the things we can do to stop it,” I think people see through that. They know that there is a dark side of the moon you’re not talking about when it comes to climate change. I think we need to be honest with ourselves about that dark side. Like, “OK, here’s the worst-case scenario.” And, if you can make peace with that, you can let it go and start doing the things you need to do.
Claire: I think it would be really easy to just say, “What’s the point? All I can do is set up cooling centers. What’s the point of me even doing this job? I can’t stop climate change. I can’t cool the earth down. I can’t support these sustainable initiatives in a way that feels big enough to me. So, what’s the point?” I think the point is harm reduction. With cooling centers and clean air centers, we are reducing the burden of heat- and smoke-related illnesses. I think when you instead focus on meaningful actions you can take, it does a lot.
When people fall into despair and say, “Well, the earth is already so messed up, there’s nothing I can do as an individual,” imagine if just 10% of people in the world said, “You know, as one person, I can make a difference.” We’d get a lot further with climate action if people understood the power they have as individuals, even if it comes to riding your bike one day to work, doing Meatless Mondays, or composting. Even if you just do that small thing, it makes a difference.
Are there ways that people can address climate change and mental health beyond the individual level?
Claire: Yes. Community building is big for both the togetherness aspect and collective action on climate change. That combats loneliness and increases a sense of agency and hope.
Rad: Here at DOH we have our Climate and Health Adaptation Initiative (CHAI) grants. Communities design climate resilience projects, and we fund them. I think more than half of our projects are community capacity-building approaches.
A group called Young Women Empowered uses our funding to support youth engagement in gardening. The gardening is food resilience, but the people involved in it said that it was really the connection with community and the land that gave them hope around climate change.
These resilience projects don’t work on one hazard at a time. They work on efforts that involve either pulling people together or making safe spaces to pull people together. That’s an effective strategy for extreme heat, but also for other climate hazards. And they build community.
I think that togetherness is really where the mental health link happens. Climate change advocacy and climate change collaborative work fails when people don’t know how many allies they have. If you ask people what they think everybody else thinks about climate change, it’s more pessimistic than when you survey people about what they actually think about climate change.
Having these spaces that are designed around climate resilience provides a safe space to develop community, and that has a lot of benefits.
Resources
The CDC offers tips on how to support your mental health after experiencing a disaster and how you can support the children in your life.
The Mental Health and Our Changing Climate report from APA and ecoAmerica suggest several evidence-supported actions for supporting mental wellness among adults, youth and children in an era of increasing climate anxiety and climate grief, including spending time in nature, building new resilience skills, sharing concerns with others, and actively reducing one’s own climate impact.
