Yes, you can turn your climate anxiety into meaningful action

Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers

LaUra Schmidt co-founded the non-profit Good Grief Network in 2016 with her wife, Aimee Lewis-Reau, to provide a space to help people cope with climate anxiety. Passionate about saving endangered species and panic-stricken about the climate emergency, LaUra had been suffering from her own climate grief and impotence. A childhood trauma survivor, LaUra had found solace in Adult Children of Alcoholics. So she took that group’s 12-step model (an offshoot of AA) and developed a 10-step program for others like her. Today, it’s helped more than 2,500 climate anxiety sufferers from more than 14 countries—and growing.

Schmidt describes the despair of climate anxiety as “when we wake up to how severe the climate crisis is, paralleled with our social injustice issues... our ecosite issues and our habitat destruction issues.” That wake-up call can make anyone question themselves, she says: “It really takes on a personal blend of, ‘ What can I possibly do?’”

The Good Grief Network arrived right on time. A recent study published in the medical journal The Lancet found that of 10,000 young people, ages 16 to 25, in 10 countries, 84% are worried about the climate.

• The same study found more than 50% feel sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless and guilty about climate change.
• Forty-five percent said climate anxiety was affecting their ability to function in daily life.

The authors wrote that this stress threatens the health and well-being of young people and there is an “urgent need” for an increase in research and governmental response to this critical issue.

Since its founding, The Good Grief Network has served more than 2,500 participants in more than 14 countries. Schmidt, who describes herself as a “truth-seeker, cultural critic, grief-worker, and the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor” hopes to help others around the world develop the resiliency and skill set to create change.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• IPCC: AR6 Climate Change 2021
• The Lancet: Young People's Voices on Climate Anxiety and Government Betrayal, and Moral Injury: A Global Phenomenon

Additional Information:

• Today: Climate Anxiety is Real: How to Cope When it Feels Like the World is Burning Results of the first large-scale, global peer-reviewed study on climate anxiety in children and young adults was published in the scientific journal The Lancet on Tuesday, September 14.
• Gizmodo: The Kids Are Not Alright In what Gizmodo called “rare candor” by scientists, the authors said that they had hoped for significant results. But they added, “We wish that these results had not been quite so devastating.”
• Washington Post: Climate disasters will strain our mental health system. It’s time to adapt
• The Atlantic: A World Without Children

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• Website: Good Grief Network
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