Let's Talk about Eco-Anxiety
Event Information
About this Event
We are hosting an online Zoom FREE event to talk about Eco-anxiety.
Facilitated by: Caroline Hickman
- lecturer at Bath University
- board member of the Climate Psychology Alliance.
with: Elouise Mayall
- climate activist
- Master's student at University of East Anglia
- Coordinator with UK Youth Climate Coalition
Join us, together with Caroline Hickman, Elouise Mayall, and voices of two younger people from the district.
Eco-anxiety or climate-anxiety is increasingly being recognised as an understandable human response to the worrying news about the environment, both at home and from around the world.
There will be an opportunity to learn more about Eco-anxiety from Caroline and her colleague Elouise. You will also be able to ask questions and hear about Caroline's approach to responding to our natural anxieties about the climate and nature crisis.
As our fears grow about environmental and climate change related problems, when just reading about the news can be daunting, with fires in Australia, the Arctic, and the Amazon devastating the landscape and wildlife, flooding in Indonesia; with melting glaciers and warming seas, rising sea levels, insect apocalypse and warnings of escalating extinction rates and social collapse, it's understandably sometimes overwhelming.
It can be hard to know how to respond emotionally to these unprecedented and unpredictable global catastrophes. Maybe it makes perfect sense to feel anxious?
Perhaps we should call it eco-awareness or even eco-empathy; as feeling anxious may be the consequence of waking up to the frightening changes to our world.
Conversations about climate change and climate-anxiety bring us face to face with our own feelings of vulnerability, fragility, hope and resilience, as well as concerns about the planet.
Navigating these complex times is perhaps the greatest challenge that humanity has yet faced. But it can be done well by coming together with others and with care, so our fears could be transformed into building resilient communities for the future.