Episode 102: Can Talking About Climate Change Reduce Anxiety?
In this episode of Citizens’ Climate Radio, co-hosts Peterson Toscano and Elise Silvestri dive into the pressing issue of climate anxiety with Kate Schapira.
Kate Schapira is a writer, educator, and climate listener based in Providence, Rhode Island. Since 2014, she has operated the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth, a public listening project where she invites people to share their climate concerns, anxieties, and hopes. Her deep engagement with these conversations has informed her approach to climate action—centering community, emotional resilience, and meaningful steps toward change.
Kate shares her decade-long journey of listening to people’s climate worries, how she transformed these conversations into actionable climate engagement, and the insights she presents in her book, “Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth: How to Live With Care and Purpose in an Endangered World,” where she explores how individuals and communities can navigate climate anxiety through connection and activism.
She also teaches writing at Brown University and works with organizations such as Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance (AMOR) and the People’s Port Authority Movement. Find more about Kate’s work at kateschapira.com.
This episode also features an inspiring good news story: a group of students in Tucson, Arizona, successfully passed a climate action resolution for their school district, securing funding for sustainability initiatives and setting an example for youth-led climate action.
Learn how listening, storytelling, and collective action transform climate despair into meaningful change.
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Production Team:
- Written and produced by Peterson Toscano and Elise Silvestri
- Music is provided by epidemicsound.com and Elise Silvestri
Introduction
Peterson Toscano: Welcome to Citizens Climate Radio, your climate change podcast! We highlight people’s stories, celebrate successes, and share strategies for effective climate communication. I’m your host, Peterson Toscano, and this is Episode 102, airing on Friday, March 14, 2025.
Joining me today is Elise Silvestri, who has been working on Citizens Climate Radio since September 2024. This is her first time co-hosting. Welcome, Elise!
Elise Silvestri: Hi, Peterson! It’s great to be here.
Peterson Toscano: You’ve worked hard on this episode. What do we have for listeners today?
Elise Silvestri: We have an incredible segment with Kate Schapira, an expert on climate anxiety and ways to reduce it. We’ll also share a good news story about students leading a climate action resolution in their school district.
Peterson Toscano: That’s right! Kate’s expertise helps people manage climate anxiety instead of causing it—which we all need.
Behind the Scenes: Elise’s Journey with Podcasting
Peterson Toscano: Elise, you’ve been with us since September. What have you learned so far?
Elise Silvestri: I had no idea how much work goes into producing a podcast! I thought I’d be doing simple audio cleanup, but editing is a much bigger process. I’ve learned so much about pacing an episode and making it engaging.
Peterson Toscano: You’re also great at editing down long interviews while keeping the essential parts. It’s nice to have a partner to help “kill my darlings” when cutting material is tough.
Kate Schapira: Climate Anxiety Counseling and Action
Elise Silvestri: What emotions come up for you when you think about climate change? Maybe you feel nervous about extreme weather events or the uncertainty of the future.
Peterson Toscano: That’s why today’s guest, Kate Schapira, is so valuable. She has spent over a decade listening to people’s climate worries at her Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth in Providence, Rhode Island.
Elise Silvestri: Kate’s experience led her to write Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth: How to Live With Care and Purpose in an Endangered World. In it, she offers actionable steps for finding joy in the climate movement and imagining a livable future.
Peterson Toscano: What makes Kate’s perspective unique is that she has been listening to people long before climate anxiety was widely recognized. She learned from her community how to navigate big emotions and find peace through collective action.
How the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth Began
Kate Schapira: I was between meetings one day when I read an article about coral reef collapse. The language was harsh: “too late,” “cannot be restored,” and “irreversible damage.” It hit me hard—I started sobbing.
At the time, people still talked about climate change as a slow, distant process. But here was proof that real damage was already happening.
When I tried discussing it with others in 2013, many dismissed my reaction:
“You’re overreacting.”
“Have you considered therapy?”
I started wondering: Does anyone else feel this way?
Then, inspiration struck. My husband is a cartoonist, and we own collections of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comics. I saw Lucy Van Pelt’s classic “Psychiatric Help, 5 Cents” booth, and a thought clicked:
“What if I set up a Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth?”
So, in 2014, I built a small plywood table, painted a “Climate Anxiety Counseling—5 Cents” sign, got a city permit, and set it up outside the Providence bus station. I had no idea what to expect.
To my surprise, people stopped to talk—right away. I stayed out there almost daily for two months, just listening.
Climate Anxiety and Economic Injustice
One conversation that stuck with me was a young father who couldn’t take his son swimming because he worked too much. He also couldn’t afford air conditioning, making their apartment unbearably hot at night.
I think about them often—how climate anxiety isn’t just about the future. For many, it’s already happening right now, especially for those facing economic injustice.
Some say, “Climate anxiety is for privileged people.” But if you fear worsening conditions, struggle to keep your family safe, or worry about affording relief from extreme heat, that is still climate anxiety.
From Listening to Action
The second year, I expanded the booth to farmers’ markets. One day, a visitor told me about a campaign to stop a liquefied natural gas plant in a working-class neighborhood. I attended their meeting that night.
That moment changed my life. I joined community climate action, working with activists to stop pollution projects harming low-income communities.
At the booth, many people would ask:
“I’m just one person. What can I do?”
That sense of isolation is deliberate—fossil fuel companies push individual responsibility narratives (“just reduce your carbon footprint”) to distract from their systemic harm.
But the real solution? Collective action. Working with others to create change feels empowering instead of overwhelming.
Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth
As I continued listening, I realized the booth was great for emotional relief, but it wasn’t enough for collective action.
That’s why I wrote Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth. The book explores:
Stories of people transforming their lives in response to climate change
How to take action, no matter your circumstances
Exercises to build resilience and connection
One of my favorite takeaways:
No one does anything alone.
We eat food others grow.
We learn from teachers and elders.
Even the most “self-made” person relies on community.
The best way to relieve climate anxiety? Join forces with others.
Good News: Tucson Students Lead Climate Action!
Elise Silvestri: Our good news story today comes from Tucson, Arizona, where students in the Tucson Unified School District pushed for a climate action resolution.
Their resolution includes:
Electrifying school buses
Upgrading buildings for energy efficiency
Incorporating climate education
Preparing for extreme heat
These students researched for 16 months, fought for funding, and won! The plan will save the school district $4.7 million per year.
Even better? The resolution is public, so other districts can use it as a model.
Closing Thoughts
Peterson Toscano: If you have good climate news to share, leave us a voicemail at +1-619-512-9646.
Elise Silvestri: I think we should start a listening booth ourselves!
Peterson Toscano: A podcast is a listening booth!
Thank you for joining us for Episode 102 of Citizens Climate Radio!
Subscribe and find full show notes at cclusa.org/radio
Support our work at citizensclimateducation.org
Music by Elise Silvestri & EpidemicSound.com
The post Episode 102: Can Talking About Climate Change Reduce Anxiety? appeared first on Citizens' Climate Lobby.
Episode 102: Can Talking About Climate Change Reduce Anxiety?
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The plan called for China to cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 17% from 2026 to 2030, which “may allow for continued increase in emissions given the rate of GDP growth”, reported Reuters. The newswire added that the plan also had targets to reach peak coal in the next five years and replace 30m tonnes per year of coal with renewables.
ACTIVE YET PRUDENT: Bloomberg described the new plan as “cautious”, stating that it “frustrat[es] hopes for tighter policy that would drive the nation to peak carbon emissions well before president Xi Jinping’s 2030 deadline”. Carbon Brief has just published an in-depth analysis of the plan. China Daily reported that the strategy “highlights measures to promote the climate targets of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030”, which China said it would work towards “actively yet prudently”.
Around the world
- EU RULES: The European Commission has proposed new “made in Europe” rules to support domestic low-carbon industries, “against fierce competition from China”, reported Agence France-Presse. Carbon Brief examined what it means for climate efforts.
- RECORD HEAT: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there is a 50-60% chance that the El Niño weather pattern could return this year, amplifying the effect of global warming and potentially driving temperatures to “record highs”, according to Euronews.
- FLAGSHIP FUND: The African Development Bank’s “flagship clean energy fund” plans to more than double its financing to $2.5bn for African renewables over the next two years, reported the Associated Press.
- NO WITHDRAWAL: Vanuatu has defied US efforts to force the Pacific-island nation to drop a UN draft resolution calling on the world to implement a landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on climate, according to the Guardian.
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