OP-ED: Eco-Anxiety and Hope – what to do instead of waiting for extinction By Neil Overy
The sixth extinction is upon us; the oceans are acidifying; the insects that pollinate our food are dying; the oceans are filling with plastic and are turning acidic; the ice caps are retreating; desertification is spreading; extreme weather events are multiplying; deforestation is increasing; biodiversity loss is accelerating; soil degradation is becoming critical; diseases are spreading, and heat waves and fires are the new normal.
Research reveals how eco-anxiety affects us in different ways depending on how much control we believe we have over our lives, how we understand risk, and how we process questions of responsibility. Three specific forms of eco-anxiety have been identified: there are the grief and anxiety that comes from direct ecological losses; there are grief and anxiety from the loss of environmental knowledge, which leads to a loss of identity; lastly, there is the fear of future ecological losses.
Hope is a messy concept. There is no agreement as to whether it is a product of biological evolution or something which is socially constructed, although there now seems to be a consensus that it is a bit of both. Psychologists have identified numerous types of hope, but the one we are interested in is called “transformative hope”.
Hope for many is narrowly defined and rarely stretches beyond immediate family. This is the hope of financial success, a rewarding job, material accumulation and a healthy body. For hundreds of millions more, poverty means that their hopes are by necessity narrow – the hope of getting a job, finding adequate shelter, feeding the family or being able to access healthcare.
The Extinction Rebellion movement of people committed to non-violent civil disobedience has in a matter of months become a global force against climate change; in Holland activists successfully used the courts to force the government to accelerate its efforts to cut carbon emissions, paving the way for similar action throughout the world; in the United States the Sunrise and Zero Hour movements are mobilising thousands of youths to resist climate change; vegan, vegetarian and flexitarian eating...
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