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How to Lift the Paralysis of Climate Change Despair
A shift in mindset to keep you activated in the face of an insurmountable challenge
When it comes to climate change, it’s easy to feel paralyzed. You’re just a single person staring down an inevitable force, one that’s being driven in large part by massive institutions and governmental failures.
It’s glaringly, urgently true that larger systemic change is necessary, requiring buy-in from both government and industry. (Just 100 companies have been responsible for more than 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to the Carbon Majors Report of 2017.) It’s equally true that no one person’s individual actions can make much difference. (Residential energy consumption accounts for just 6% of all energy consumed in the United States each year.)
They’re numbing statistics that leave one feeling helpless, a feeling exacerbated by the steady stream of apocalyptic predictions: about mass extinctions, extreme weather, new diseases, toxic air, cities slipping underwater. You can vote for officials who make climate change a priority, but the day-to-day things, like recycling your cans or taking shorter showers, can seem almost laughably futile, done more to make yourself feel better than for any real impact.
Of course, ignoring the problem doesn’t accomplish anything, either. That’s why environmentalists and journalists work so hard to drive home the point that climate change is a crisis that requires collective action. But the state of high alert around the issue may actually be counterproductive: Research has shown that fear-inducing descriptions of climate change can backfire, making people feel disengaged from the problem.
“The problem with the current approach of scaring us into action,” says environmental activist Karen Thurman, “is that it leaves us overwhelmed with the size of the problem and paralyzed into inaction.”
The challenge, then, is finding a way to stay energized in the face of a slowly unfolding disaster.
Stay motivated
“Silent smugness” — the feeling that you’ve made enough of an effort to feel like the problem is no longer your responsibility — is one thing to avoid…
