by SueEllen Campbell, Yale Climate Connections
October 5, 2026
Here is a question for you: When you allow yourself to face the reality of climate change, how do you feel?
Maybe you feel afraid, anxious, angry, guilty, exhausted, overwhelmed, or grieved. Such reactions are now understood to be common, as are ways of dealing with these emotions, ways that stretch from paralysis to action.
While much attention has been paid to topics like climate science, economics, political policy, and clean energy, it took a while for the study of often messy and illogical human emotions to catch up. Starting with a handful of Buddhists, therapists, and psychiatrists, this is now a rich field of study and understanding. These days, if you search the internet for such terms as “climate and emotion,” you’ll find many good resources.
Here are a few interesting and useful examples.
Ecological grief
“We know how to mourn other humans – but what about ecological grief?” Megan Mayhew Bergman, The Guardian, July 2026. This personal essay is about how we need ways to share our grief with others and in public. “It feels like a contradiction at the center of modern life: we experience profound environmental loss and largely pretend nothing is happening.”
“Beyond ecological grief.” Amy Romer, podcast host, Canada’s National Observer. This six-part podcast is excellent, never over-simplified and always both informative and moving. Episodes one and three deal with non-climate losses; the others are climate-focused. Climate emotion and communication specialist Britt Wray comments here and there, including an introductory explanation of why she believes the series’ structuring model from grief psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is an imperfect fit for climate grief. One issue of Wray’s own newsletter, Unthinkable (on Substack), addresses this, as well as the debate about the effectiveness of fear in climate communication that was featured in the episode.
Read more: Feeling climate grief? These spiritual caregivers are stepping in.
Climate anxiety
“Almost 20 years ago, a mid-career psychiatrist started thinking about climate anxiety and mental health.” Nina Dietz, Inside Climate News. This portrait of Lise van Susteren tells the tale of how the field developed. See one of her initiatives, the Ecopsychepedia website of free, reader-friendly mental health resources.
“In the developing field of climate psychology, ‘Eco-Anxiety’ is a rational response.” Nina Dietz, Inside Climate News. How therapists realized they needed a different toolkit for this issue: sufferers weren’t catastrophizing so much as they were responding to real dangers.
Read more: How your editors cope with feelings of climate anxiety and dread
Climate therapy in practice
Leading practitioner Leslie Davenport offers good advice in these columns:
“A lifesaving lesson for climate activists: You deserve support, too.” Sarah Kennedy, Yale Climate Connections. A good survey of current wisdom about how to deal with burnout and other negative results from immersion in climate change work, here for activists but elsewhere for scientists. Includes a “climate emotions wheel” to help those who aren’t sure exactly how they feel.
Read more: Want to talk to a therapist about climate change? Here are four things to ask
Research into climate emotions
The various national versions of nonprofit news organization The Conversation are good places to follow academic research about climate emotions and how best to deal with them. One quick summary of such pieces is here: “How to build mental resilience to climate change.” Anna Turns. Other individual studies cover such things as poetry, loneliness, and how to inoculate against exaggerated doom.
Past news roundups on this topic:
Read more: The subtle yet insidious ways climate change affects mental health
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