Topic: Climate Grief

Climate Grief (origin: Aldo Leopold)

Climate grief, a term often used interchangeably with environmental grief, is the emotional pain people experience when they notice or anticipate the loss of species, ecosystems, and meaningful landscapes due to climate change. Climate grief has roots in ecological grief, a term first used by conservationist and philosopher Aldo Leopold in 1940 to describe feelings of pain due to ecological loss.

Grief is a normal human reaction to loss, but in many ways climate grief is unique because of the existential and relentless threat to life on Earth. Often grief stems from a singular event, like the death of a loved one. However, climate change is an ongoing phenomenon that is threatening the future of the natural world. This can lead to constant fear and anxiety, hence the similar concept of eco-anxiety. Whereas eco-anxiety describes worry about the future, climate grief describes feelings of sadness about past or ongoing loss, which may exacerbate eco-anxiety that this sadness will continue as climate change continues to cause environmental loss.

Typically, people working closely with climate change like scientists and activists are at higher risk of experiencing climate grief. Additionally, Indigenous communities whose lands and ways of life are under direct threat due to climate change often experience high rates of climate grief. Climate grief is also not socially acknowledged or supported by familial or cultural practices in the same ways as grief from the death of a loved one; as such, there is a need for more research about manifestations, impacts, and treatments of climate grief.

©2024 ClimateLit (Nicole Richardson)

Related terms. Eco-anxiety, Climate Change, Aldo Leopold, Solastalgia

More. See the American Psychological Association’s 2023 Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Children and Youth Report and the American Psychological Association’s 2021 Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Inequities, and Responses

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by Katherine Rundell

“He’s a guardian. He had not been clear, until this moment, what that meant: it meant this feeling. It meant burning to keep watch, for that which needed to be watched. It meant burning to keep it safe. It meant a ferocious and careful love.”

by Maja Lunde

“But bees cannot be tamed. They can only be tended, receive our care.”

by M. G. Leonard

“One snowflake will melt on its own, but billions of them together … are powerful enough to change the face of a planet.”