A new vocabulary that seeks to express human emotions about our ecological distress is going mainstream
Stress about climate change and its impact on our lives is now common across the globe. Neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers have found that concern about rising global temperatures and the risk to our sustainable existence on earth now goes beyond the consideration of physical threats from catastrophic climactic events and ecological disasters.
The Australian thinker Glenn Albrecht has argued that the state of the earth evokes certain emotions and effects in our minds which he has termed “psychoterratic syndromes”. Psychoterratic syndrome is an umbrella term that holds the developing vocabulary about mental states relating to the ecological health of our planet.
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“Eco-anxiety” is the most common of these syndromes that have been studied and publicly discussed. Other prominent examples include “climate grief”, “eco-guilt”, “climate trauma”, “eco-shame” and “climate anger”. Psychoterratic syndromes obviously do not impact all of us in the same way.
Intense feelings
Migrant populations, indigenous peoples, farmers, refugees and women are more vulnerable not just to the vagaries of climate change but also to the intense feelings and emotions that the degrading state of our planet’s health stirs up.
Young people across the world, especially in the 15 to 30 years age group, are also greatly impacted by psychoterratic syndromes and some have even begun to make life choices that apparently help mitigate the situation. These choices include not entering committed, long-term romantic relationships and not having children.
Eco-anxiety is the abbreviation of ecological anxiety and refers to a strong and unpleasant emotional response to climate change. Although the term has had currency since 2007, it entered public and scientific discourse in a significant way in 2018 when the young climate activist Greta Thunberg publicly addressed her own struggles with the phenomenon.
Eco-anxiety is linked with the psychoterratic syndrome of climate or ecological grief. Climate grief or solastalgia refers to the acute sense of loss, despair and sadness that individuals experience as they confront the reality of climate change and its impact on the ecology of our planet.
Climate grief has recurred in literature related to environmental studies since 2010 and most commonly translates into discomfort and hopelessness regarding loss to natural landscapes, ecosystems and plant and animal life forms.
Images and videos of dissolving ice sheets in polar landscapes which pose a grave threat to bears and penguins, for instance, evoke grief among many. Similarly, the fear that the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia, will be irrevocably harmed by human activities drives many among us to despair and despondency.
Shame and guilt
The strong awareness and experience of solastalgia is often directly proportional to the pyschoterratic syndrome of eco-guilt. Short for ecological or climate guilt, eco-guilt comes about in situations where we feel that we are not able to make the kind of environment-friendly choices that we wish to make.
Think of attending a brunch, for instance. If the organisers have not arranged for biodegradable cutlery or there is no option for you to carry your own reusable coffee cup to the event, you may feel restless and responsible for not being able to behave in the manner you consider correct. Similarly, if we are at the supermarket and have forgotten to carry our cloth bags along, we may feel guilty if we must use non-recyclable plastic or polythene bags to carry the stuff we bought home.
Eco-shame or ecological shame is linked to eco-guilt. We feel eco-shame when we believe that an (undeliberate) act of ours that may harm the environment is (actually) conscious and wilful. We may also believe that the action indicates our supposedly environmentally irresponsible nature and personality.
Consider that you are visiting a foreign country. The local inhabitants there follow a tradition that requires reusable cups to have water and they carry their own cups with them. Unaware of this tradition, you have not carried any useful cutlery with you and are having to make use of a plastic cup.
In such a situation, you may feel that you should have checked before you arrived and carried some earthen or paper cutlery. You may also conclude that this is not a one-off lapse on your part and that you are fundamentally unconcerned about the ecological health of the earth.
Climate change worsens to climate trauma when the individuals who have endured catastrophic climatic experiences continually get triggered. Their strong responses to situations when the triggering circumstance has not allowed them to recover from the pains of the past may be emotional, psychological or even physical.