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For many people, climate change provokes strong and at times overwhelming feelings: fear, anxiety, and despair are commonly reported emotions. And when younger people speak to older generations about climate change, the strongest emotions felt are betrayal, uncertainty and worry. These are powerful and challenging responses that are valid and legitimate in the context of the scale and pace of climate change.
Emotions like these matter because of their ability to shape people’s experiences, thoughts and actions. Both positive and negative emotions underpin a wide range of responses to climate change – from policy support to building community resilience. Anger (in its different forms) has been found to predict activism and support for climate policy. And while not as commonly reported as other emotions, a sense of optimism can be found in taking meaningful personal steps, or being inspired by the stories and actions of others.
Yet emotions also have the power to disconnect people from thinking or caring about climate change. For those who are disillusioned with or disengaged from the climate conversation, their strongest emotions may be reserved for their rejection of climate policies or environmentalism in general (sometimes called ‘contrarian’ anger). For some people, climate change doesn’t provoke many emotions at all.
This thread brings together research on the emotional spectrum that people experience – and campaigners appeal to – around climate change.
The Reuters Institute for Journalism, at the University of Oxford, has released a report (following a similar analysis in 2022) analysing how people in eight countries – Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Pakistan, the UK, and the USA – access news and information about climate change in 2023.
UK audiences (in line with those in other countries) rate ‘solutions focused’ climate news as the type of news they are most interested in, supporting the idea that there’s a need to balance the (necessary) focus on the risks and threat of climate change with reporting that signposts or highlights solutions to problems, as well as the problems themselves.
The Local Storytelling Exchange, grounded in solutions-focused regional reporting from around the UK, exists to address this need, showing ‘this is what the transition looks like’ through relatable stories that aim to build a sense of agency (which climate stories which only focus on risks and threats, can undermine).
The Local Storytelling Exchange has published a searchable map of stories from around the country that show ‘what the transition looks like’. They are a way to show (rather than tell) relatable stories of people taking action, which helps inspire others to do the same and show politicians that voters don’t just want and expect leadership on climate, they’re already taking steps themselves.
Anger is a powerful emotion. The Anger Monitor, a project of the Mind Works Lab, surveyed people in six countries (including the UK) and identified different types of anger in relation to climate change.
‘Toxic’ anger is difficult for climate activists to engage with, and is the type of anger that can be easily weaponised by extremists. But ‘constructive’ anger can motivate climate action, the Anger Monitor report argues, especially if activists harness the power of constructive anger through empowering campaign actions (these could include ‘feeling heard’ or taking actions to prepare for extreme weather conditions).
Echoing previous research that has recommended combining the strong emotions elicited by climate impacts with tangible mitigation/energy saving actions, the Anger Monitor research advises leaning into the range of emotions that different types of climate content invoke. Anger and worry levels can be raised by worsening climate impacts, but a sense of qualified hope can be instilled from seeing others taking tangible action.
Government climate opinion tracker data shows that concern about climate change remains very high in the UK in 2023:
There were also some important differences between segments of the population:
A poll conducted by Opinium for the ethical bank Triodos found alarmingly high numbers of young people are seeking mental health support for environmental and climate anxiety. The survey of 2,000 UK adults, reported in The Times, found that 14 per cent of the population have sought help, however, this figure more than doubles to 29 per cent among 18 to 34-year-olds. In striking contrast, the figure falls to just 3 per cent amongst the 55+ age group.
Commenting on the findings in The Times, Dr Carloline Hickman at the University of Bath said:
We do not want to classify it as a mental illness. It is socially, collectively, politically caused. There is nothing wrong with people worried about climate change.
The All We Can Save project has compiled a list of resources that are designed to help people dealing with difficult climate emotions. The resources include a list of climate-aware therapists, methods to connect with feelings, networks to deal with ecological grief, and shared stories of climate anxiety. As Susi Moser writes in All We Can Save:
“Burnt-out people aren’t equipped to serve a burning planet … [so] the well-being of our hearts and souls must be reestablished to their rightful place as relevant, essential.”
In a ‘meta analysis’ of 46 studies, which had explored how hope-based messages about climate change were received by public audiences (including UK audiences), the authors concluded that:
Polling by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has found that three in four adults (74%) reported feeling ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ worried about climate change – similar to the percentage who said they felt worried (75%) the year before, in 2021.
Just 1 in 10 people (9%) felt ‘unworried’ (somewhat unworried or not at all worried) about climate change, and around one in five (17%) said they were neither worried nor unworried.
The most frequently reported reason among those who were unworried or neither worried nor unworried about climate change was feeling that ‘there are more urgent priorities to be worried about’ (55%, up from 34% the prior year).
In a study of over 12,000 people across 32 countries, feelings of climate anxiety was linked to:
Higher exposure to information about climate impacts, was related to greater climate anxiety, but experiencing climate impacts was not. The study found that previous experience of flooding didn’t have a strong relationship to climate anxiety. The researchers suggested that:
“(T)here are important nuances in how people interpret their extreme weather experiences including politically-motivated biased cognition, and the fact that climate change is only one of several interpretive lenses with which people can choose to make sense of their experiences”.
In a global report, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that a majority of people in almost every region of the world surveyed said they were ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ worried about climate change.
More than nine in ten respondents in Mexico (95%), Portugal (93%), Chile (93%), Puerto Rico (92%), Costa Rica (92%), Ecuador (91%), Panama (91%), Peru (91%), and Colombia (91%) say they are worried. In contrast, only about one in three respondents in Yemen (32%) and just under half of respondents in Jordan (48%) say they are worried about climate change.
Research by Panu Pihkala sheds light on the vast array of climate emotions that people can feel in response to the climate crisis.
The paper details specific emotions (such as fear, dread, hope, loneliness, and embarrassment) while showing how these fit into broader emotional categories (e.g. surprise-related, threat-related, sadness-related, anxiety-related). Altogether, the work lists over 50 distinct types of emotion that people may experience in relation to climate change.
The ‘Climate Emotions Wheel’ brings together the more detailed work into a simple, accessible visualisation.
Comment: Why should we care about climate emotions?
From the marketing of products and holidays, to political campaigns, to TV dramas exposing injustices, emotions are at the heart of getting other people to act in certain ways. What is known about how people respond emotionally to climate change?