By Lina Boyer
While certain companies enrich themselves and governments play war, climate change continues to accellerate. And between droughts in Brazil, hurricanes in Haiti and the melting of continental glaciers, there is plenty to worry about.
In 1996, Véronique Lapaige, a Belgian-Canadian public health and mental health researcher, coined the word « ecoanxiety ». It’s a combination of the term “anxiety” (a feeling of unease, worry, or fear, often about an anticipated event or something perceived as a threat) and the prefix “eco” (from the Greek oikos, which signifies “home, habitat”, a prefix used to refer to ecology).
After a study of 50 participants from different walks of life, Dr. Lapaige observed that “many express a similar identity malaise in the face of the appalling realization of what is happening around them.”
This modern malaise has only increased through the years. According to a post-doc student at Yale University, Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) is the most affected. How is it that our youth is the most ecoanxious?
A simple allegory can explain. Plunge a frog into boiling water and it will die immediately. Plunge it into warm water and heat it up gradually to boiling, and the frog will acclimatize to the change in temperature and survive.
This allegory illustrates the experience of a number of youths thrown into this world full of problems, contradictions and corruption without having had a say in things. Our collective inaction is at play.
Does the Future Exist?
The Global Footprint Network set this year’s Earth Overshoot Day at July 24. That’s the date when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. For the rest of the year, we are maintaining our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
So we are living on credit for five months a year. While we should be slowing down our pace of life to make up for this deficit and give our planet a break, we are maintaining our environmental debt, not to mention worsening it.
We are literally in the middle of asphyxiating ourselves.
It is difficult for Generation Z to believe that they have a viable future. Especially when we see that individual actions taken in favor of the climatic condition of the Earth only change a tiny bit of our human condition.
Youths don’t find any meaning in a concept like their future. A militant group called “Le temps de militer” (It’s time to campaign) incites college and university students to drop out of school in order to take concrete actions based on the present situation. There is also Greta Thunberg’s Friday school strikes, which many high school and college students took part in.
Whether we agree or not, it is clear that these young people were and are addressing a current problem, namely a loss of meaning and apprehension about the future.
A letter called “Le Pacte” asks its signatories to promise to not have any children as an ecological step. For them, bringing a child into the world is considered an egotistical act. Because the world is in a pitiful state, we don’t really know if we have a future. So how can we hope for a future for our kids?
Testimonies
In a small poll on the definition of ecoanxiety, words like « climate emergency », « powerlessness » and « anxiety » endlessly arise. For most participants, there is a sense that we aren’t “doing enough”. One of the participants mentioned that he found it “absurd that, when it comes time to blame someone, we send the ball back to the citizens, as if large corporations and multinationals didn’t alone bear the vast majority of responsibility.”
For other respondents, it is a citizen’s responsibility. Thus, it is possible to establish a correlation between people who feel responsible or at least have the weight of responsibility on their shoulders, and their level of ecoanxiety.
On the other hand, according to a young woman in her twenties, it is important to distinguish the extinction of the planet and that of several animal and plant species from that of the human species. To understand her point she cites the late comedian George Carlin’s monologue, “Saving the Planet.” As he put it, “Humans are arrogant. The planet has survived worse than humans and come out of it just fine. Nonetheless, the human species risks extinction because of climate change.” The irony is that we ourselves will be the cause of our own extinction, as Carlin pointed out.
A Summary
Ecoanxiey isn’t a disease, but a worry based on the reality of our own modern lives. Whether it’s the human species or the planet that risks losing out, it’s necessary to be aware of these incessant changes and to do what we need to do to rectify things.
Several animal and vegetable species risk their lives, living in atrocious conditions. Whether it’s for our children, for ourselves or for other living species, protecting our ecosystems and taking whatever action we can is vital.
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