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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Now, our climate story of the week. When people think of climate change, they certainly think of natural disasters, warming, flooding, but here's a less-discussed impact, the effect that it has on people's mental health. Eco-anxiety is an emerging term studied by psychologists and climate activists. It's the dread that people experience from knowing there could be impending environmental collapse.

With this in mind, younger generations are questioning their ability to plan for a future, whether to go to grad school, receive training, even have children in a world that will continue to look less and less like the one we know today and one that is less safe. An unpredictable future causes distress in any circumstances, and it causes distress when it comes to the future of the planet and how it will impact their lives and their children's lives.

Psychologists are treating patients to deal with eco-stress increasingly, but while eco-anxiety is a source of worry, it can also serve as a catalyst to encourage people to participate in environmental protection, environmental activism, and to use those feelings for action rather than despair. Let's talk about this with Britt Wray, Human and Planetary Health Fellow at Stanford University and author of the new book Generation Dread.

Some of you who listen to our Death, Sex & Money podcast with Anna Sale know she's also the current episode guest on Death, Sex & Money, and we want to bring her onto the radio as well. Britt, welcome to WNYC. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Britt Wray: Hey, Brian. Thank you so much. It's good to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Can you talk about the term eco-anxiety first? What's the scope of that?

Britt Wray: Sure. The American Psychological Association defines it as the chronic fear of environmental doom, which is a pretty apt description of the feeling that many folks are reporting, but it's not just anxiety, it can co-occur with feelings of sadness, grief, anger, a sense of helplessness or powerlessness because of the overwhelming nature of the climate and environmental threat.

As you mentioned, it can be constructive, it can be adaptive when it causes us to reevaluate our decisions and come together with others and address the problem by taking collective action, but it can also become debilitating if it is too hard to cope with and actually starts to impair our daily functioning, and then has really negative mental health consequences.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, who's relating to this already, who listening right now experiences eco-anxiety, call up and tell us a little bit about what you feel, you experience relative to the potential fate of the planet as well as possibly the current state of the planet. Mental health professionals, we would love to hear from you, psychologists, anyone else who is treating anybody, in dialogue with anybody who has experienced eco-stress at a level that they present with it in your practice. (212)-433-WNYC, (212)-433-9692, or tweet @brianlehrer.

Britt, you describe symptoms of eco-distress including, "Can impair functioning even if one is far from the frontlines, causing physical symptoms such as sleep disturbance and panic attacks." Do you want to tell us a story? Do you have individual stories in the book that you would want to pick one of?

Britt Wray: Sure. I've interviewed women who-- For example, one young mother when she was pregnant was having nightmares and flash-forward visions of having to run with her child and having her child witness his parents starving or dying in conflict over dwindling resources in a climate-disrupted world. Others who relate to climate visions, walking down New York City streets and just seeing floodwaters rushing up and cataclysm around them. Although it wasn't happening, it felt very real.

There are many statistics, one study that my colleagues and I did of 10,000, 16 to 25-year-olds in 10 countries around the world to get a sense of the scope and burden of their climate anxiety. In places like Nigeria, India, and Philippines, but also the UK, US, and France, we found that 45% of these 10,000 young people say that their feelings about climate change are impacting their daily functioning, so their ability to sleep, eat, go to school, play, be in relationships, and have fun, basically just be a useful, young person.

This is happening even in outsized proportion in places that are really exposed to climate hazard already right now. In some of the low and middle-income countries, we found that this distress had the biggest impaired functioning effect, but it's also significant in places like America. We really need to take this seriously and start talking about it to help support people who are finding themselves falling into the bottom of a U-shaped curve of despair on this issue.

Brian Lehrer: This is personal for you, right, in terms of your own grappling with whether to have children?

Britt Wray: Yes, absolutely. I really came to write this book, Generation Dread, because I had my own upswell of eco-anxiety and grief several years ago when my partner and I started considering trying to get pregnant. I'm a science communicator, and reporting on climate and reading all of the grim evidence in scientific papers but also squaring that with the lack of effective action from our leaders and global negotiations and so on birthed a really painful dilemma for me.

It raised this question of, "Is it okay to have a child and bring them into this situation when it's really hard to muster the confidence that we're going to get this right and that we're going to band together to protect humanity not only now but in the future?" I had to grapple with some really distressing emotions that took many years for me to come to any kind of decision. I just want to say, this is a really loaded and emotional and difficult topic, and there is no right or wrong way of answering that question of whether or not you have a child.

Of course, there's many pressures that have always made this a complicated question for people throughout human history. It's just that now climate change is factoring into our family planning, especially younger people. There's one study that showed that in the US, 78% of Gen Z are saying that climate change is making them question whether or not they want to have kids. Also, in our global study of 10,000, we found that 39% say that they're feeling hesitant to have kids because of climate change.

The personal is political, and what is done to protect the habitability of the planet and the availability of resources, freshwater, and stable food supplies, of course, has an impact on whether or not someone feels comfortable bringing a kid into the world. It's not just a private decision, although it's up to the autonomy of people to go about that thinking and feeling on their own, but it's pretty complicated. We need to take that inside-out approach.

Brian Lehrer: Spoiler alert, what did you decide for yourself, and how do you think others can learn from it?

Britt Wray: Well, I did decide to have a baby eventually. I have an eight-month-old right now, little boy. It's still not a simple decision. There's still parts of me that question whether or not it's the right thing to do. I think that that's an interesting aspect of this. I made a decision, I had a fork in the road because it felt to me like a commitment to joy, come what may, but other people choose differently, and I totally understand and respect that.

It doesn't mean that we're not going to toggle between distressing emotions over what's happening and our decisions if we feel this and decide to have kids anyway. Really, my kid put stakes in the ground for me so that I have my eyes open to the crisis every day, focus on it in my work, really with intention of trying to create the communities that will help him be in resilient company with others who care about this and are working on this.

Essentially, what my processing allowed me to do was take a step back from this loaded, heavy question of, "Is it okay to have a child in the climate crisis?" To thinking, "Okay, what's required to have a child in the climate crisis? How can we support kids today?" Of course, whether or not I have a kid, there's tons of kids out there that are vulnerable and not being protected.

There's also many communities who have long lived under existential threat. Climate change certainly isn't the first one of those. There's a lot of resilience to be mined by bringing in diverse perspectives about what it means to live amidst dark clouds and how people pull together and find a way through. That was all relevant for my thinking.

I'll tell you, I've made some child-free activists upset just yesterday for describing my decision as a commitment to joy when their decision to not have kids in the climate crisis to them doesn't feel like it's a commitment to fear. We have to be really careful about how this is talked about. It's really nuanced, and, again, no right or wrong answer.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, my guest is Britt Wray, Human and Planetary Health Fellow at Stanford and author of a new book called Generation Dread as our climate story of the week guest for this week. Madeleine in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Madeleine.

Madeline: Hey, Brian. I'm a longtime listener, first-time caller. Shout out to my parents if they're listening. I'm a 25-year-old so I'm right on the cusp of Gen Z. All I think about when I think about my future, is the climate. Well, not all I think about, but that's always a part of it. My partner and I we're a queer couple, we can't procreate organically so if we have a kid, we'd have to really make the effort to, however, we decide to do that, but I don't think that we're going to.

Mostly because of, we don't know what world our child will live in, in terms of the climate. Also, we don't think we can grow old in the city as much as we'd want to. We think that for a [unintelligible 00:10:44], a sustainable, comfortable, safe living situation, we're going to have to leave, and that's with the privilege of being able to leave, but it's always on my mind. I appreciate this segment. Thanks.

Brian Lehrer: Madeline, thank you so much. Let's go on to Meghan in Greenpoint. Meghan, you're on WNYC. Hi, there.

Meghan: Hey, Brian. This really when you were like teasing it coming up, totally struck a chord with me. I pretty much constantly talk about this with my therapist. We do talk about the idea of being resilient, but I'm just incredibly scared of like what the future holds. I am in my mid-30s, and I don't know what the future is going to be like for my nieces and nephews, let alone my peers who are having children.

I don't want kids, I never have, but it just becomes more and more clear to me that it's like, in my opinion, a really selfish and terrible decision to have a child knowing that, in 50 years, it may not be livable in the way that we live now. All that sighs like, when my friends do have kids, I'm incredibly happy for them, because it's what they want. Yes, these little kids are cute and stuff, but I just can't help but think they can be credibly short-sighted when I don't even know what the world is going to look like climate-wise at the end of my life, let alone the end of a child born in the year 2022.

Brian Lehrer: When you deal with this in therapy to the extent that you want to reveal any of that, but you already said that you deal with it with the therapist, what feedback do you get from your therapist?

Meghan: I don't want to say that she thinks I'm being overdramatic, because she doesn't and she is supportive and understanding, but I think she having been older, she's in her mid-50s, I think she's able to look at it from a different perspective and be like, "I've had times in my life that I thought the world was ending and it carries on and everyone-- we figure it out."

Which I can understand, but I just think that the climate change threat is so much more serious. When people don't feel the same way that I do, on one hand, I'm like, "Okay, that's really great, and maybe I am overreacting, or I wish I could be more blissfully ignorant than you," but on the other hand, I feel like nope. As a whole world is under-reacting.

Brian Lehrer: Meghan, thank you so much for your call. Molly in Hillsdale you're on WNYC. Hi, Molly.

Molly: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. My eco-anxiety has definitely exacerbated over the last couple of years, especially post COVID. I think it's because almost the reality of a post-apocalyptic world feels visible and more real. I've gone on anti-anxiety medications for the first time in my life because of my eco-anxiety and has made a big commitment to a career switch leaving my job and I'm currently in the market looking for a career in the impact in the environmental sector.

I just am frustrated by the lack of urgency from people in my network who are liberal and consider themselves eco-minded, but the speed of action and the commitment and the awareness of how we need to act with urgency doesn't seem to be there.

Brian Lehrer: You said you've gone on antidepressants, relative to this issue?

Molly: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Can it be used, in your opinion, the eco-anxiety as a spur to action? Do you think people need to experience personal level anxiety in order to get meaningfully involved in the way that you're frustrated with some of your liberal friends who are not?

Molly: I do. I've experienced that firsthand. It's what drove me to quitting my job, and it's a company that is committed to environmental change, but it wasn't moving quick enough, and I just felt like as long as I have to work, and I do have to work, I want it to contribute towards really net positive impact in the world.

I had to feel that in every bone in my body, but actually going on the medication allowed me to be calm enough and sensible enough to make that decision. That really helped me not just like, freak out about what's going on and that I should make sensible change to have the impact that I want to have.

Brian Lehrer: Molly, thank you so much. Well, Britt, you see how easy it is to get callers who are experiencing eco-anxiety at a pretty profound level?

Britt Wray: Absolutely. This is not surprising to me, unfortunately.

Brian Lehrer: Unfortunately. We have a tweet that I'm going to read to you. A listener writes, "Important to mention that eco-anxiety is primarily a white phenomenon, even though we suffer the fewest consequences of climate change." I guess the person writing as a white person, even though we suffer the fewest consequences of climate change. What would you say to that perspective?

Britt Wray: I write about this in my book. I understand why it may appear that way. The data actually shows us something different. Firstly, yes, there is great important critical discourse to be had on eco-anxiety being a white phenomenon, in the sense that there's this sudden outpouring of grief and anxiety from often white middle-class citizens of industrialized nations talking about the climate crisis being this existential threat that makes them now feel unsafe in the world, and regard the future is some doomed place, and sure, yes.

However, for many communities, of course, the climate crisis is just one more layer of trauma and difficulty on top of the pressures of systemic racism, the legacies of colonization, living under an authoritarian regime, or under the threat of sexual violence, or whatever it might be. It's like these intersectional issues.

We have to not focus inward if we're privileged and feeling this anxiety and realize that like, sure, maybe the climate crisis makes now us realize that the world is far more tragic and fragile than we previously thought it was, but there are many communities that have long known how unsafe the world can be. That's what I think this person writing in is getting into. Then when we look at the data, actually, the disruption of climate anxiety on functioning. For example, in that study of 10,000, 16 to 25-year-olds that I talked about, my colleagues and I ran last year.

The impaired functioning is greatest in Nigeria, in India, in the Philippines, in Brazil, and in predominantly countries made up of communities of color. Also from the Yale Program on climate communication in the US, there's evidence to show that Black and Latino communities are actually more alarmed about climate change than their white counterparts. With that, they're likely to take up action more than their white counterparts. There's some nuance that we really need around this point.

Brian Lehrer: You do, write, "A long history of colonialism is inextricably linked to climate catastrophe, the destruction of indigenous cultures, and planetary harm." There's that intersectionality of issues, right?

Britt Wray: There really is. Settler colonialism came in and started disrupting indigenous people's relationships to their non-human kin, to landscapes, to environments, to other species that they hold as the dearest values in their culture. That's the environmental disruption that's now happening to everyone, as ecological breakdown is what we're moving towards the climate crisis and disasters ramp up.

There's some really important work from anti-colonial scholars who show that the climate crisis is just widening for everyone that has been happening to indigenous communities through time. The problem is that governments are standing in our way of adapting. Indigenous folks have figured out how to survive and continue throughout all those pressures, but we need to understand now that we need to do what's possible to remove the pressures for all of us as we move forward into these broken environments.

Brian Lehrer: Here's an intersectionality of issues [unintelligible 00:19:34] that we might not have expected or maybe we should have. Bonnie in Hackensack, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bonnie.

Bonnie: Good morning. My opinion or my thought is more about the intersection of the overturning of Roe and climate change. Specifically the potential of bringing more children into a world that is climate-challenged, and I'll take the

discussion off the air.

Brian Lehrer: Can you go a little more into why you told the screener that there's an intersection of Roe and climate change?

Bonnie: Yes. If there are more babies born as a result of Roe being overturned, these babies will then be being brought into a world that is climate changed with relationship to your discussion about women questioning whether they want to bring children into a world, which is climate challenged.

Brian Lehrer: Got it. Bonnie, thank you very much. I don't know if you mention abortion rights in your book, do you?

Britt Wray: No, I don't. Actually, the book came out before this became a topic to now think about within this context. Of course, it always could be, but I think it's an interesting point, that this overturning will produce more kids in harm's way who are not being adequately cared for and of course, kids need resilient support to deal with a climate-changed future. It's another aspect that intersectional climate activism is going to want to address

Brian Lehrer: A friend of mine, who's considering not having kids because of eco-anxiety brings up two reasons. I think we've heard one of them from our callers who are concerned about what kind of world their potential children would grow up in. The other concern that I heard was about it being socially irresponsible to add more children to the world because the size of the total planetary population is one of the drivers of climate change. Do you write about that or hear that or experience that?

Britt Wray: I addressed this in the book. It relates to long-standing conversations around overpopulation that really got off the ground in the 1960s and 1970s and attached to environmental thinking. I also debunk in the book, the idea that surely number of humans are what's responsible for the climate crisis, because for example, in America, over 80 years, the birth rate has been declining, and yet at the exact same time emissions have been skyrocketing.

Factoring in consumption in [unintelligible 00:22:16] carbon is submitted by individuals varies hugely according to inequality and the kinds of lifestyles we're talking about care. Looking at the carbon legacy of a child in Bangladesh is very different from that of a child in America. Yes, that's part of the book and it is part of what some people who are reluctant to have kids in the climate crisis say are one of their main concerns that they don't want to have the kid negatively affect the environment as opposed to just having a negative environment negatively affect the child.

It's certainly part of the conversation, but what I'm finding is far more overwhelming now is that people's concerns are really about the wellbeing of the child going into a climate-changed world, as opposed to the overpopulation topic.

Brian Lehrer: Last question, another one from a listener via Twitter. Listener writes, "I wonder how much this anxiety has been exacerbated by that moment early in the pandemic when everyone saw what happens when human activity stops." Do you write about the pandemic with respect to eco-anxiety at all?

Britt Wray: I write about the pandemic as being this incredible opportunity for us to get real about the mental health impacts of a warming world, because we now understand in a very gritty way how mental health is a public good, perhaps before the pandemic, many could still see it more as like whatever unlucky brain chemistry someone has or unfortunate trauma that individually happened to them, which is accounting for their mental health problems.

We really see with the pandemic, how the quality of our shared social fabric, our social connections, the ways of being able to take care of one another, protect the most vulnerable communities, protect our frontline workers, the people we depend on, then constitutes the ways in which we can feel well and have good mental health. Because there's still such an amount of burnout and suffering anxiety and depression and so on, people still can't find the mental health support within the pandemic that they want.

There's not enough therapists. There's not enough in our health structure to really provide that. We need to get smart now about reconstituting our systems of mental health, breaking them wide open and getting into the community, and putting the bulk of mental healthcare and support in those places so that people can be better protected as these disasters do add up moving forward.

Ultimately it's a hopeful story because there's a lot of ideas about how to do that shifting and innovation of the mental health model so that we're not just doing this narrow biomedical thing, but really empowering people to take shared ownership of their mental health.

Brian Lehrer: That's our climate story of the week with Britt Wray, Human and Planetary Health fellow at Stanford University, and author of the new book Generation Dread. Listeners you can hear more from Britt Wray in her interview with Anna Sale on the latest podcast, episode of Death, Sex and Money. Britt, thank you so much for joining us.

Britt Wray: Thank you so much for having me.

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