Who Are You To Talk About Climate Emotions?
Expertise, lived experience and impostor syndrome
I want to thank everyone who wrote to me about last week’s post, about the dilemma of air travel.
Everyone who wrote showed a lot of grace and shared that they were struggling with similar things. A friend whose wife is from central Brazil underlined that the luxury we experienced was very different from the experience of most people in the country, and that’s a point well taken.
Aviation is a small part, about 3.5% of the world’s global warming, but a huge percentage of a given individual’s carbon footprint, and one that is fiendishly hard to substitute. Some of you mentioned that you buy offsets for flights— you can learn more about that here. And recently on Chris Hayes’ podcast, Jigar Shah, who works for the federal government scaling carbon-free energy, was talking up a specific company that makes jet fuel from municipal solid waste. Sustainable aviation fuels have helped power 370,000 flights in the last 8-9ish years, according to the Department of Energy. We need more!
On to this week:
I recently gave a talk at the Greenpoint Library called How And Why To Talk To Kids About Climate Change. It was sponsored by the office of Emily Gallagher, who is my New York state assembly member and a serious badass. Both she and Lincoln Restler, our city councilmember, are honestly the most present, almost parodically reponsive & visible, genuine, cool, progressive local electeds I have ever known.
The talk went amazing. The vibe was supportive and heartfelt. One mom shared her deepest, darkest fears about what kind of future we might be leaving our kids. An 11 year old talked about how the book Haven Jacobs Saves the Planet had helped her confront her own climate anxiety. A mom from Climate Families NYC talked about all the great work that they’re doing.
And then there was that one person, on social media….
Who commented “Is the journalist also a licensed therapist? Psychiatrist or psychologist? If not - what are the qualifications for teaching about child and adolescent mental health?”
This hit me right in the impostor syndrome.
(Fun story: When I first heard about impostor syndrome, I didn’t relate. ‘Impostor syndrome is for people who are actually a big deal, but they don’t realize it,’ I thought. ‘I’m actually not a very big deal, I just got where I am by happenstance, so I don’t qualify for impostor syndrome.’)
So, since that comment, I’ve been mulling over in my head: what, in fact, qualifies me to speak about climate emotions?
The first-order response, the one I would have defaulted to for most of my life, is that I’ve been listening to, learning from, and even collaborating with, experts. I’ve learned so much in the past few years from talking with people like Britt Wray of
Leslie Davenport, Renee Lertzman, Panu Pikhala, Eric Lewandowski, Janna Diamond, Emily Diamond, Jenni Silverstein, Megan Slade, Elizabeth Bechard, Lise Van Susteren and Harriet Shugarman. And from editing a forthcoming podcast with Jess Serrante and Joanna Macy.These are people who’ve been researching, writing, and working in this area — for years, some for decades. And what I’ve always been good at, throughout my career, is translating and communicating the experts’ ideas. I even won a prize for “excellence in media reporting on research” once.
I’m also contributing to the shared body of knowledge on this issue. Even though I don’t have an advanced degree, I currently have a federally funded research translation grant to do focus groups with parents/caregivers to learn more about how they and their families are experiencing climate emotions and to improve our Climate Mental Health Network resources. I wrote a reference article for the Ecopsychepedia, an online resource intended for researchers, practitioners, and the public, on the relationship between climate change and post-traumatic growth. I coauthored a journal article with Harriet Shugarman on parent climate anxiety.
But the real answer has little to do with all of that.
It’s that I’m feeling these feelings. I’m working hard internally, day to day, on articulating my feelings and becoming more self-aware. I’m trying to model that vulnerability with my kids, with my friends and in other relationships. I’m showing up for these conversations. I’m doing my best at breaking out of my glass case of emotions. I’m in my 40s, and I’m learning.
it’s considered a big problem in the climate space that people feel like they don’t know enough to speak up. But here’s the thing. Climate is a systemic problem, involving fields like atmospheric science, meteorology, cryospheric sciences, hydrology, geophysics, oceanography, evolutionary biology. The amount of specialized knowledge required to be truly expert in the topic of climate change, its causes, manifestations and solutions is vast. Then you add in the human psyche on top of that? I’m going to go ahead and say that no one person has a grasp on all of this. We can always be learning, AND we can’t let knowledge be a barrier to action.
And I want to turn it to you, the person reading this. Climate change, like the COVID pandemic only more so, affects every single person who’s alive on earth. You have skin in this game and I’m willing to bet you have feelings about it. And that means you’re qualified to talk about them.
A word about Gaza
I went out to a ceasefire rally in the pouring rain last Saturday. I’ve been pretty measured in how and how much I talk about the conflict, always mindful of the October 7th acute trauma, the hostages, the sexual violence, as well as the historical trauma of my wider Jewish community. But things have entered a new phase. It seems pretty clear from all reports that the Netanyahu government is using famine as a weapon of war, and children are starving to death. The Biden administration, whatever they may be doing behind the scenes, is not using the leverage of withholding our military aid and support to stop this from happening. That means as I stack up my 1099 forms in preparation for filing my taxes, I think of my money going to bombs.
One day, as hard is it is to imagine now, this phase of this conflict will end. I learned about a growing organization that is seeking a new path forward for the day after. A Land For All is an Israeli-Palestinian jointly led group, is laying out an innovative and practical plan that would bring sovereignty, democracy, equal rights, restitution and reconciliation to all the people "from the river to the sea." It's built on partnership and shared institutions.
This group started a decade ago, building two organizations, in the West Bank and in Israel. Just after October 7, they courageously merged the two with a unified and equal Palestinian-Israeli board. They are led by two impressive women, May Pundak (Jerusalem) and Dr. Rula Hardal (Ramallah) and their leadership includes political experts and leaders of civil society from Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and the Palestinian diaspora.
I met the leaders in a small private Zoom. It's the most inspired I've been in a while. Please check them out and support them if you can.
I agree with all you said here, and I like to hear from anyone who's thinking and having feelings about climate change. I also think, and I hope I'm not being too literal here, that it doesn't directly address the social media commenter. They asked what makes you qualified to teach about climate feelings, not just talk about them. I agree that to *treat* individual adolescents, you need to be a therapist. But to *teach* about how to talk with adolescents in general, you need to be a teacher, writ large -- to have read and listened and thought about this challenging topic and have good ideas to share. This completely describes you, Anya. You're in fact the best person I know of to teach about these things. Keep writing and talking and teaching!
You make a good point, Anya. Head knowledge is one thing, but feelings are equally valid. Often, it's our awareness that things don't feel right that gets us thinking about a problem and taking action. like you, I'm on a journey of awareness about what I sense and feel, because I was conditioned as a young person to suppress my feelings. I think a lot of people were conditioned the same, which means we need reminding to tune in and feel. Thanks for your very thoughtful articles.