The Vocabulary Of Our Ecological Discontent

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 threat from catastrophic climactic events and ecological disasters.

The Australian thinker Glenn Albrecht has argued that the state of the earth evokes certain emotions and affects 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.

“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 15-30 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.

Trauma and anger

A common example of climate trauma is of persons who live in flood-prone areas. Even as the flood-cycle may be seasonal or annual, they relive their pain in intense and powerful ways again and again.

Sometimes, climate trauma translates into climate anger. Climate anger manifests when individuals and groups protest human actions that they hold responsible for climate change and environmental degradation. Commonly, climate anger is directed against politicians, multinational corporations, and policy making bodies.

The actions carried out by the Extinction Rebellion, Thunberg’s speeches berating leaders of developed countries for insensitive responses to the climate crisis, and young Indians decrying the fact that environmental action and justice  do not find mention in the election campaigns of most political parties in the country are prominent examples of the phenomenon.

Scientists, thinkers, and psychologists continue to study, analyse, and examine the nature of the psychoterratic syndromes described above as well as many others like “eco-fear”, “eco-phobia”, “climate paralysis”, “climate burnout”, and “environmental melancholia”.

We need to remember that the syndromes that we experience or feel usually do not indicate mental health difficulties.

Most of them, in fact, are rational responses to the climate crisis and may lead to the undertaking of environmentally friendly action.

Yet, it is important for us to seek help if we experience one or more of the pyschoterratic syndromes in a particularly severe or thoroughly debilitating way.

(Published under Creative Commons from 360info. Read the original article here)