Climate Grief
In the midst of all the war, famine, fascism, and human rights being under attack, I’ve been thinking about another man-made phenomenon taking place–one that has been ongoing since the Industrial Revolution, if not earlier–climate change and the accompanying grief. I found this timeline from the American Institute of Physics that was quite helpful.
These days, it seems like news about the climate and environment takes a back seat to everything else going on, so our grief is supplanted by the horror we feel over the very important issues of genocide and the cruel stripping of human rights. I think, however, that the grief we feel over the earth's warming, icebergs melting, and the rapid extinction of unique species, still influences the way we move in the world. At least, I hope so.
During the third session of Reclaiming Ourselves: Sociopolitical Grief and Neurofeedback, we had a great conversation about when we learned and started caring about climate change and what we continue to do to try to slow the destruction.
I remember hearing about how aerosols were destroying the ozone layer. I was still young, so I didn’t quite understand what I was hearing, but it stuck with me long enough that when I started experimenting with styling my hair, I avoided hairspray that was in an aerosol can. The idea of a hole somewhere up in the sky that protected us from the sun was really scary to my child-sized brain. Around the same time, I learned about the dangers of the sun to our skin. As a pale, freckled person, I am sensitive to the sun. I guess those two lessons made me fear the sun itself. As I got older, though, the fear grew into an understanding that went beyond hairspray and sunburns, and climate change became an issue I still care deeply about. I’d love to hear how you learned about global warming.
Of course the Chernobyl Disaster (1986) and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (1989) left an impression on me. Seeing the sea birds covered in the thick, slick oil was heartbreaking. So much so, that my brother, who was only six years old, would cry whenever the news was showing the cleanup efforts.
In my research, I learned a couple new words: solastalgia and terrafurie. Solastalgia means “distress or emotional pain caused by environmental changes that impact one's home environment.” (1)
Terrafurie is what it sounds like–rage over the mindlessness of the earth’s destruction, especially as directed at those who we perceive as causing or enabling the destruction. (2)
I relate to both of those terms, sometimes both at once, along with the other types of grief that come with the destruction of Earth. The other types of grief we may feel over the changes happening to our environment and the living (and not living) beings in it, include complex grief, anticipatory grief, ambiguous grief, and disenfranchised grief. I want to touch briefly on each of them so we can begin to understand our feelings.
Complex or complicated grief* is the accumulation of many types of grief or causes for grief that can feel overwhelming. It may also refer to a grief that persists in intensity.
Anticipatory grief (sometimes referred to as “pre-grief”) is when we begin grieving an ending (whether a loss, separation, or death) before it has happened. We often feel anticipatory grief when someone we love has a terminal illness.
Disenfranchised grief is grief that is not taken seriously by others or is not considered an “acceptable” grief by society.
Climate grief can include both anticipatory grief and disenfranchised grief, along with the grief over what has already been lost due to environmental changes, therefore, climate grief is complex. It is also ongoing and far-reaching. An article in The Guardian describes how climate change can have an effect on a person’s mental health:
“The research tells us that climate change will trigger and exacerbate mental illness, with young people and those from marginalised backgrounds being disproportionately impacted across their lifetimes.
Life as we know it is becoming more unstable with each passing day. The climate crisis is not an isolated problem; it intertwines with every facet of human existence, from food security and water availability to economic stability and mental well-being.” (3)
“My Heart is Moved by All I Cannot Save
My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.”
As much as I am concerned about the earth and its inhabitants, my sister, Sarah, was 10 times more concerned. It seemed like her grief for the planet, and especially for all of the animals, hurt her heart perhaps as much as losing our parents hurt. Because it was such a strong grief, some of it showed up as anxiety, which made daily tasks like managing the kitchen compost an area of extreme frustration. She cared so deeply, I have no doubt that she was grieving all the time, but she also cared so much she did what she could to make a difference. She did her best to eliminate plastic from her life; buy organic clothes and food; and use cleaning products that did not put chemicals, microplastics, or other harmful substances into the groundwater. Most of all, she loved being in nature and took delight in every living thing.
I tell you this so you have context for the next part of my story. Sarah wanted to be cremated when she died, so her father-in-law researched cremation services for us. He provided a couple selections of varying price points. Dave (Sarah’s husband) and I considered all of them, but something just didn’t feel right, so we did some research of our own. I came across Be a Tree Cremation,** which performs water cremation (also known as aquamation). I showed Dave their website, concerned that the cost would be too much, since it was nearly twice as expensive as the the fire cremation services we considered. We knew that Sarah cared so much about the environment that she would prefer water cremation, which, according to Be A Tree’s website, “uses 90% less energy than flame cremation and releases no emissions into our shared sky.” They also reserve the liquid used in the process (they call it Tree Tea) and return it to the earth at various farms, gardens, and sanctuaries in the Denver area. (4) We each got to keep a bottle for our own gardens (the magic of this is a story for another time).***
Dave said, “well, you know Sarah would spend six times as much to buy something organic.” We agreed. It was the best option for us at the time, and we felt we were honoring Sarah better than she would have expected. It is also really special to use some of the liquid on my plants. It makes me feel like she is helping them grow (she is!).
There are other alternatives to flame cremation and traditional burials where the body is embalmed, with more becoming available and legal in additional states all the time. Here in Washington, aquamation, green burials, and human composting are options. I’ve toured Recompose in Seattle. Like Be a Tree, they provide you with the byproduct of the process—in their case, compost. Their facility is like being in a spa, even though it’s at the end of an industrial street lined with huge warehouses.
It comforts me to know that even in death I will be able to do something good for this planet by keeping my carbon footprint small.
There are so many aspects to climate grief and how we as individuals can harness that grief to do our best to protect the earth. It’s heartbreaking that we’ve let it get this bad, and it’s horrifying that our government and industries across the globe are not doing everything they can to save our Mother Earth. Grief itself is made up of so many different– sometimes competing, sometimes amplifying–emotions that it can be easy to give up and throw everything in the trash, to turn away while our waterways are being polluted, or feel hopeless as the EPA is gutted. I, for one, am so exhausted by grief for the world and for myself that it’s tempting to ignore my solastalgia, but as I learn about microplastics in not just our groundwater, but also our bodies, I feel terrafurie, which makes me committed to doing better and making my voice heard.
Here are just a few facts:
The rapid loss of species we are seeing today is estimated by experts to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate.
If the low estimate of the number of species out there is true - i.e. that there are around 2 million different species on our planet - then that means between 200 and 2,000 extinctions occur every year. (5)
One issue in the PNW is less water and warmer water (partly because less water, easier to heat, also air temps are warmer), affects local fish species, which in turn affects marine mammals like whales and sea lions. We may see warm-water species like striped bass migrate to the sound and northern oceans, which would compete for food or even eat the existing fish. Sea-run trout and salmon would be at risk because stripers eat the smolts (young fish).
We are experiencing more extreme tides, which exposes sea life to the air for longer periods. Many organisms cannot live out of the water for long periods.
There are a million more facts I could share, but I think you get the point. Humans have caused the rapid extinction of species as well as the exacerbated hole in the ozone layer (though it does appear to be shrinking since 2020). (6) We can feel deeply for our environment and work towards a “green” lifestyle; we can write our elected officials; we can attend river clean ups; we can reduce our reliance on plastics and fossil fuels; we can conserve water; and we can rally, protest, and raise awareness. We can also allow ourselves to grieve. Let our tears replenish and cleanse both the ground and ourselves. Let’s come together in our grief and our compassion.
If you’d ever like to talk about climate grief, reach out, or attend an (Any Grief) Grief Group, where your concern about the earth will be held gently and understood.
*Note that I am not referring to the definition in the DSM-5, though some of the characteristics are the same.
**You can read Sarah’s obituary on Be A Tree Cremation’s website.
***Shout out to Summer for guiding us through the process and to Sherèe for checking up on me six weeks later. They were so gracious and kind.
1: https://fiveable.me/key-terms/introduction-to-literary-theory/solastalgia
2. https://glennaalbrecht.wordpress.com/2017/07/12/terrafurie/
4. https://www.beatreecremation.com/water-cremation
5. https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/biodiversity/biodiversity/
