Leading climate change scientists have warned we only have 12 years to fix global warming, leading millions to question what they can do to save the planet. But the constant worry can lead to climate change-induced anxiety, or eco-anxiety, which is affecting our mental health.
"It's actually quite a useful and appropriate response to be anxious in the face of climate change," psychologist Emma Woodward explained on TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning.
"Climate change is, essentially, a catastrophic event that can impact not just ourselves and our families but the whole of humanity, so feeling anxious is totally appropriate."
However, Ms Woodward said being confronted with negative news articles on the topic can cause people to "feel hopeless and powerless, like action is futile", leading them to "block it out".
"We feel anxious in response to something that we feel is threatening, and if we feel hopeless and powerless, like action is futile, then we tend to go to block it out, but what we need to do - because obviously, we do need to act - is we need to be able to manage that anxiety and get ourselves away from debilitating anxiety into galvanising society so we can move forward and make sustainable changes using our behaviour," she said.
"If we can harness some of those feelings, if we can manage our anxieties so we don’t become too overwhelmed and use it to make positive change from ourselves and the planet, then that's a good thing."
She also stressed the importance of making small and manageable changes to begin with, rather than "pressure ourselves to make big changes all at once", which may lead to burnout.
"Behaviour change happens best when we do things that are aligned to our own goals, and if we can make small changes and not kind of pressure ourselves to make big changes all at once – so, for example, waking up tomorrow and saying, 'That's it, I'm never touching plastic again,' or 'I'm going to be vegan' - it's going to be a very hard change for you to sustain over time. You might last a week and then it would tail off.
"What we need to do is think about things that we can do, we can manage. That might be being vegan one night a week, or it might be not going shopping unless you’ve got your reusable shopping bags, but making sure that the change that we do is something that we can do consistently and then we can build on it.
"There are small steps that are really important and powerful, and we shouldn’t underestimate those."
Ms Woodward said it was "actually quite hopeful and optimistic" to see the thousands of students who protested against climate change across Christchurch, Auckland and Wellington last month.
"That is their 'normal', and the fact that they are saying, 'This isn't OK,' and, 'We want something different,' is actually quite hopeful and optimistic. We're not having people that are sitting back and saying, 'OK, we're just accepting this and this is our fate'. We've got people saying, 'No, this isn't good enough. You need to listen to us – we're the generation with the target on our back. You need to be moving for us'."
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