Eco-nomic Anxiety: An Intelligent Response
by Paul Edwards, JD and Sarah Anne Edwards,
PhD, LCSW
Articles on what is being called “eco-anxiety”
have begun appearing in periodicals of late,
including some in the New York Times. The
term is being used to refer to the psychological
response to the proliferation of news about a constellation of environmental events such as global warming, climate change, resource depletion, species extinction, and ecological degradation.
Actually, the term is a misnomer. It is reflecting a far-broader, more serious concern that is spreading rapidly across the land.
Anxiety usually refers to either vague, undefined discomfort or irrational fear out of proportion to the likelihood or impact of the feared events. Neither definition applies to understanding today’s eco-concerns arising what needs to be done in response to them.
The economic effects of global warming, resource depletion, and other environmental crises are neither vague nor irrational. The resulting “anxiety” many Americans are feeling is growing rapidly because we are beginning to see the painful effects of this reality in our daily lives.
Though most people may not yet fully recognize the connection, environmental change is directly related to the worsening economic and social pressures being felt by most Americans, i.e. rising prices of staples like housing, food, utilities and transportation, accompanied with falling or stagnating wages and job opportunities.
The jolt of recognizing the economic implications of these issues eclipses heartfelt concerns we may also be having about such things as melting glaciers and the peril it posses for penguins and Polar bears. It is our own economic survival that feels in peril, most particularly to those who are clinging to a middle-class existence.
If a major tornado were heading toward our community, we wouldn’t say those who were concerned about it are suffering from tornado-anxiety. Feeling concerned about the seriousness of what is taking place ecologically and the unfolding economic fall-out from it is a normal reaction to a growing consciousness of a very real threat. It needs to be defined and treated as such.
What Is An Intelligent Response?
First, we should NOT minimize, discount, distract or otherwise suggest palliatives to assuage these concerns. The more society and those around us discount the reality of the economic and environmental consequences at hand, the more anxious we become and the more maladaptive our responses.
Just as we would affirm that approaching tornadoes are real, dangerous and potentially destructive, we need to affirm the appropriateness of concerns about what’s happening to our economy as a result of the global environment and acknowledge the significant, disturbing implications that lie ahead, including that there may be dire consequences for some.
We also need to understand that the unpleasant feelings we have about these implications, from fear and grief to anger, confusion, disillusion and depression – are all perfectly natural and normal reactions. We may wish to deny, discount, and ignore these feelings, but that we must not do.
We must not ignore the tornado or our concerns about it. Instead, we must get through our feelings so we can mobilize. (See the article The Waking-Up Syndrome, which describes the stages we can expect to go through in facing long-term ecologically-based economic crises.) Most important to navigating through these stages successfully is to recognize that they are not the same as the traditional grief process we are more familiar with.
What we’re facing is not one painful, discrete event or loss we much adapt. We are facing an extended series of continual losses, ranging from minor inconveniences to major upheavals, most likely throughout the rest of our lifetimes. These losses won’t be limited to certain aspects of life. Nearly every aspect of our lives will be altered in some way by these changes, eroding the familiar touchstones that underlie our sense of security.
Unlike with the loss of a loved one, a career, health or even impending loss of life, both those around us, and society as a whole, are not yet particularly sympathetic, toward these concerns. Instead our discomfort may be denied, mocked, and ridiculed or our concerns simply brushed aside as too much to concern oneself with.
No one, for example, would tell a grieving widow that her husband isn’t really dead. Nor would anyone blame and accuse a widow of spreading negativity if she brings up her feelings of loss and all it complications. But such responses are all too customary, when one brings up concerns about the effects of global environmental/economic change.
Finally, many of the things we commonly do to assuage painful losses will either not be helpful or available. For example, going shopping, one of the more popular ways we in America deal with unpleasant feelings, will ultimately only aggravate, not ameliorate our growing concerns. Nor will traveling, partying, and of course, turning to drugs, alcohol and other addictive substances.
The tornado is still coming and we still know it, even if we want to deny it.
The best way to measure whether we’re responding intelligently is to ask ourselves, “Does this help me to better understand what’s happening and how to make sensible choices? As with an approaching tornado, the best antidote to our concern is taking action.
Taking Action on the Personal Level
On a personal level we need to get busy doing what needs to be done to create as secure a situation for ourselves as we can. Just like those facing a tornado, we need to start now readying our house, so to speak, battening down the hatches to make sure we have a secure shelter handy. We need to start putting the following safeguards in place as quickly as we can, knowing, of course, that we can’t do them all at once and can only start from where we are:
- Secure a dependable income. That means having a locally-or-virtually-based career, preferably an independent one, in a trade or service that is resistant to off-shoring, not readily replaced by technology, easily bartered, and requiring as little travel or commuting as possible.
- Get out of debt post haste and don’t acquire any more. We will need to apply every cent we’re now doling out in interest payments to making necessary changes and safeguards, be they paying the cost of re-training programs, relocating, retro-fitting, launching an independent career, or taking any other of the following steps.
- Reduce our energy footprint. Scale down the size of our homes and high-maintenance, materialistic lifestyles to minimize the amount of electricity, gasoline, water, and other utilities and commodities we consume. This may involve taking lots of relatively simple steps like fixing breakfast at home instead eating out at the coffee shop or unplugging appliances that perpetually draw electricity even when not in use, as well as undertaking more sweeping changes like relocating, home-sharing, energy retro-fitting our homes, or getting off-grid.
- Locate if possible in an area with a large and dependable naturally occurring, year-round source of water and as long a local growing season as possible. In the future localities will be drawing on their own natural resources and less able to afford to sell and transport their resources elsewhere. We will each need to depend more heavily on the local resources at hand.
- Learn how to grow food. Since the growing and transport of food will be increasing labor- and cost-intensive, the more we can grow for ourselves in our own backyards, patios, decks and rooftops using natural, energy efficient methods like permaculture, the more secure we will be.
- Learn how to fix things. As the cost of manufacturing and transporting products and parts made from petroleum and other natural resources rises, the more important it will become for us to personally repair, restore, and maintain what we now own.
Taking Action on the Community Level
- Get active in or help form a relocalization, permaculture, or simplicity group in your area. People in communities like Portland, OR, Bellingham, WA, Willits, CA, and others across the country are actively working in such networks to protect and strengthen their local economies by making them more sustainable. Taking needed action in our personal lives is much easier with the support, ideas and camaraderie of others.
- Choose one environmentally-related cause you feel strongly about and contribute whatever time and resources you can. There are many national and local organizations devoted to preserving the natural environment. They all need our help. We can’t possibly respond to them all, though, so this sometimes leaves us feeling helpless to make a difference. By choosing one to devote time and energy to, we are doing our part.
- Elect officials at all levels of government who are aware of and have a desire and willingness to:
- Initiate laws, policies and programs that will help individuals and local, national and global communities respond intelligently to the changes taking place.
- Create incentives to help individuals and communities make needed changes to reduce consumption and increase sustainability.
- Change laws that prevent and hinder individuals and communities from taking needed steps to reduce consumption and increase sustainability.
- When necessary pay for needed changes with tax on commerce that exacerbates and accelerates environmental problems.
For more concrete examples of intelligent action that can carried out at the national policy level and the consequences of not doing so, see “Five Stages of Collapse” by Dmitri Olov.
Summary
As we become involved day-to-day in taking which ever of these steps we can at the time to safeguard and secure our future, the pent up energy generated from anxiety about the environment and what’s happening to our economy gets channeled instead into positive action.
In so doing, we’re busy, we’re engaged, we’re doing what we can, we’re involved with others who share and understand our concerns. Our feelings begin to shift from concern to confidence and enthusiasm for the possibilities that lie ahead. That’s how we believe we can best respond to the concerns that are becoming known as “eco-anxiety.”
This is the first in a series of articles we will be writing on this topic and we are most interested in your thoughts and reactions, as well as learning of other resources you’re aware of that should be included here.
Paul & Sarah Edwards are the authors of Middle-Class Lifeboat, Careers and Life Choices for Navigating a Changing Economy. Their book outlines over 50 sustainable careers well-suited to the changing economy, many examples and how-to’s for 10 change-friendly lifestyles alternatives and nine cashless alternatives for extending your income.
Resources:
Documentary Films
The End of Suburbia
Everything’s Cool
What A Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire
Books
Affluenza by Graaf, Wann, Naylor.
Currency of Hope by Debtors Anonymous
Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway.
The High Price of Materialism by Tim Kasser.
The Long Emergency by James Howard Knustler.
Middle-Class Lifeboat: by Paul & Sarah Edwards.
The Party’s Over by Richard Heinberb
Peak Everything by Richard Heinberg.
Reconnecting with Nature by Michael J Cohen.
Web Resources & Communities
Beyond Therapy
Debtors’ Anonymous Project Nature Connect
The Post Carbon Institute
Peak Oil Blues
Permaculture Institute
Relocation Network
Seeds of Thought
Sharing Sustainable Solutions
Simple Living Network
Speaking Truth to Power
The Sustainability Institute