Building a Lexicon for Climate Anxiety
How actively listening to vulnerable communities could help us understand climate anxiety better and spur corrective action.
Welcome to Track Changes by Ripple Research! Every week, we closely analyse an interesting global event or phenomenon, bringing you a data and analysis-backed perspective on critical public debates. Thank you for reading and subscribing, and we look forward to reading your comments and feedback!
What is climate anxiety? In this thought piece, we examine the existential fear that climate anxiety creates, and how we can describe it. Finding a lexicon for climate anxiety – across languages and cultures – is a complex process, but we outline some ways of building one. Descriptive neologisms – that is, new phraseology – are powerful signposts, but are coined and used by communities with a voice and a platform. If we are to view these neologisms as true indicators of climate anxiety, we risk missing out on the voices of the most vulnerable.
We argue that it is only by listening to vulnerable communities most affected by climate change that we can meaningfully unearth a lexicon for climate anxiety. That could give us an ontology for this phenomenon, and allow us to eventually address it.
Image Source: ‘A Perch of Birds’, wikimedia.org.
As an umbrella term, ‘climate anxiety’ seems fairly straightforward: it refers to ‘anxiety related to the global climate crisis and the threat of environmental disaster’ (Wu 2020). As sea levels rise, air pollution shrouds entire cities in clouds of smoke and species go extinct daily, it stands to reason that communities worldwide will experience mental health repercussions. The environment – not necessarily defined as climate itself – is a ‘safe’ space. It nurtures us, giving us a space to breathe, play, build and seek refuge. When this space is threatened, we are bound to feel afraid, anxious and depressed. Two elements of climate anxiety, however, make it an ontologically obscure phenomenon to define. First, it is existential: threats of melting ice caps and raging pandemics don’t just generate fear at a personal level. Entire populations are now terrified, spreading a cumulative nervousness that is tangible yet difficult to collectively articulate. The notion that we are all threatened by our own actions creates a ‘loss of ontological security’- a fear of slipping out of existence (Clayton 2020). Second, it is varied. Expressions of climate anxiety take on millions of linguistic and cultural forms around the globe, driven strongly by those who are able to articulate their fear. This adds to our knowledge, but potentially excludes the truly vulnerable populations who we ought to be listening to: Pacific Islanders, coastal villagers, tribal communities and nomads, among others. Is ‘climate anxiety’ meaningful if we lack these critical perspectives?
We know climate anxiety exists. We know it is pervasive. We know it is crippling. How, then, do we demarcate it linguistically? Is there a ‘lexicon’ we can create that can help us better understand this phenomenon? Perhaps one method of classification is to examine manifestations of eco-anxiety in terms of ‘symptoms’ of mental health disorders. The term “ecodepression”, for instance, recalls melancholy and sadness, to which symptoms like chronic fatigue and apathy are attributed; it can be considered a “deactivating emotion, unlikely to motivate action” (Stanley et al., 2021). On the other hand, terms like “eco-anxiety”, “ecological stress”, “climate angst” and “ecophobia” are linked to emotions like anxiety, fear and helplessness that may ‘activate’ an avoidance response (ibid.). To create a lexicon, we therefore conjoin the context (environment, ecology, wildlife) and the reaction (angst, depression, fear). This straightforward approach is an excellent starting point, because it allows us to predict neologisms and social tendencies before they become a part of a commonly used online or verbal lexicon.
In some cases, entirely new vocabulary might arise to describe an otherwise indescribable fear of climate change. ‘Solastalgia’, a word combining solace, desolation and nostalgia, was coined by Glenn Albrecht to describe his interpretation of the churn caused by climate change and man-made environmental destruction in Australia (Albrecht 2007). It’s an interesting, all-encompassing word, reflective of a concern for the future speckled with a deep nostalgia for a cleaner past. Lexicons are living, breathing linguistic repositories, so it is critical that we find a sustainable way to identify such new words and add them to our collections when they arise. Some of the shifting dynamics of climate anxiety are more apparent in foreign languages, which often conjure up entirely new terms or give old ones new meaning. For example, the German hitzestress (‘heat stress’) takes on new meaning in a climate change context, transcending the simple notion of feeling a little too hot. Since climate anxiety is a global phenomenon, our lexicon must be multi-lingual too. Hopefully, many of these linguistic transitions – Anglophone or otherwise – will find space in online and literary expression, spreading enough to alert us to their importance.
Frankly, that’s wishful thinking. Our lexicon will undoubtedly grow, but will it grow meaningfully? If we want to make our collection representative, we need to pay careful attention to how truly ecologically vulnerable communities are expressing their anxiety. What are Bangladeshi fisherfolk, Pacific Islanders, tribal communities in the Amazon and farmers in drought-prone regions saying? How are they expressing themselves? Although there is the occasional impassioned appeal at global climate change forums, wealthy, powerful countries continue to go about their business, negotiating carbon taxes and emissions goals as miles of coastline disappear in the Pacific and crops wilt every summer. The real consequences of this – destroyed homes, shattered livelihoods and families – are glossed over in shiny hallways as bureaucrats dispose of ten plastic coffee cups in between ‘high-level’ meetings. How can we hear these voices meaningfully? Most often, the populations in question are miniscule, their languages and cultures under threat. Do they have the agency to generate and expand a common global lexicon? Probably not. Therefore, if we depend on neologisms to first become apparent in order to ‘identify’ them as meaningful, we stand to lose out on what the vulnerable are saying.
This problem is intractable if we choose to build our lexicon based on popular online and verbal linguistic practices. There is no alternative to fieldwork- to entering and integrating into vulnerable communities, hearing their concerns and feeling their anxiety. We cannot expect widespread online expression of climate anxiety in Tuvaluan to alert us to new frameworks of eco-anxiety, because it doesn’t exist. Concerningly, the only way eco-fragile communities know and express climate anxiety is by being directly in harm’s way. Nobody else can access that fear. After all, the flipside of climate change is seductive: faster cars, bigger factories and ever-expanding products for us to choose from. How do we listen meaningfully if we are charmed off our feet, head in the clouds?
Nonetheless, there is hope. A lexicon is a route towards action. It shouldn’t take an expanding linguistic base to alert us to the dangers of climate change. The phrases we already use are indicative enough of the problem. We can certainly learn more, but we know this- climate anxiety is real, and we need to intervene sustainably in our future to prevent it from pushing communities apart. That is the substantive, actionable goal. As we expand our lexicon, this goal takes permanent precedence.
If you liked this post, please Subscribe to receive more directly in your mail inbox! We’ve penned down deep-dives on Whataboutism, Wellness in the USA, and several more issues of global relevance.