The stress of climate change

When one's home begins to change, it no longer provides the deep solace that people have come to rely on. This may lead to a palpable sense of dislocation. As climate change disrupts the old patterns of weather and ways of life, people are becoming stressed. WorldChanging.com recently published an important article on this subject.

A small yet growing body of evidence suggests that how people think and feel is being influenced strongly by ecosystem transformation related to climate change and industry-related displacement from the land. These powerful stressors are occurring more frequently around the world.

A case in point: When researchers from the Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health at the University of Newcastle in Australia conducted interviews in drought-affected communities in New South Wales in 2005, the responses suggested some of their subjects may have been suffering from a recently described psychological condition called solastalgia (pronounced so-la-stal-juh).

Solastalgia describes a palpable sense of dislocation and loss that people feel when they perceive changes to their local environment as harmful.

The particular vocabulary is not critical to me. What matters is that we realize how climate change has this psychological dimension. I hope it will invoke in us a sense of compassion as we go about making the changes to society that are necessary. We will still go about our work of dismantling our unsustainable ways of living, but let's do so with an open heart and a kind demeanor. We may feel angry that some people seem to be holding on irrationally to the old ways, or otherwise making very unwise and harmful choices. Well, that is to be expected of people under stress, especially when the stress is unconscious to them.

Also, we can be aware of how this stress is operating in ourselves. I know that I feel deep pain as I watch the beautiful Earth being damaged, and as I experience the effects of global warming in my local climate. I need also to take care of myself -- to make this stress conscious so it is not running insidiously below the surface. If I don't, I won't be much help in the world.