This was created to provide resources to those who are experiencing climate or ecological grief.
This guide includes the following types of resources:
Articles/Handbooks
- Climate Doom to Messy Hope: Climate Healing & Resilience: A Practical Handbook for Climate Educators and Community
- Published by the UBC Climate Hub
- Coping with Climate Change
- Published by Australian Conservation Foundation, Australian Psychological Society, Climate Reality Project Australia, and Psychology for a Safe Climate
- Ecological Grief as a Response to Environmental Change: A Mental Health Risk or Functional Response?
- Published by the National Institutes of Health
- Ecological grief literacy: Approaches for responding to environmental loss
- Published by the Society for Conservation Biology
- Fighting Climate Anxiety on the Frontlines
- Published by Atmos
- Healing Our Climate Grief
- Published by Sustaining All Life and United to End Racism
- How climate change affects mental health: Experiencing disaster – or even reading about it in the news – can be stressful and scary. These steps can help
- Published by Yale Climate Connections
- Youth Wellbeing: Climate & Health: Responding to Youth Emotional Distress Due to Climate Change; A Guide for Parents and Caregivers
- Published by the Minnesota Department of Health
Books
- A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet by Sarah Jaquette Ray
- Book Description: “Drawing on a decade of experience leading and teaching in college environmental studies programs, Sarah Jaquette Ray has created an “existential tool kit” for the climate generation. Combining insights from psychology, sociology, social movements, mindfulness, and the environmental humanities, Ray explains why and how we need to let go of eco-guilt, resist burnout, and cultivate resilience while advocating for climate justice. A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety is the essential guidebook for the climate generation—and perhaps the rest of us—as we confront the greatest environmental threat of our time.”
- Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made by Gaia Vince
- Book Description: “We all know our planet is in crisis, and that it is largely our fault. But all too often the full picture of change is obstructed by dense data sets and particular catastrophes. Struggling with this obscurity in her role as an editor at Nature, Gaia Vince decided to travel the world and see for herself what life is really like for people on the frontline of this new reality. What she found was a number of people doing the most extraordinary things.”
- Beyond Climate Grief: A journey of love, snow, fire and an enchanted beer can by Jonica Newby
- Book Description: “In this magical, often funny and deeply moving personal story, award-winning science reporter Jonica Newby explores how to navigate the emotional turmoil of climate change.”
- Climate Grief by Shawna Weaver
- Book Description: “After years of research on climate change, human behavior, and climate grief, this book captures Shawna’s experience in environmental justice activism, as a mental health professional, and navigating the complexities in the intersection of climate change, personal wellness, and scalable sustainability solutions.”
- Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety by Britt Wray
- Book Description: “An impassioned generational perspective on how to stay sane amid climate disruption.”
- H is for Hope by Elizabeth Kolbert
- Book Description: “In twenty-six essays—one for each letter of the alphabet—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction takes us on a hauntingly illustrated journey through the history of climate change and the uncertainties of our future.”
- Hope, Human and Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth by Bill McKibben
- Book Description: “Hope, Human and Wild sets out on a dramatically different journey to provide examples and hope for a sustainable future, one in which our society’s wealth is measured less by its material productivity and more by its spiritual richness; less by its consumption of resources and more by the extent to which we live in harmony with the natural world. From the Adirondack Mountains to Kerala, India, to Curitiba, Brazil, McKibben offers clear-eyed and profoundly compelling portraits of places where resourceful people have confronted modern problems with inventive solutions, and thrived in the process.“
- Mourning in the Anthropocene: Ecological Grief and Earthly by Joshua Trey Barnett
- Book Description: “Enormous ecological losses and profound planetary transformations mean that ours is a time to grieve beyond the human. Yet, Joshua Trey Barnett argues in this eloquent and urgent book, our capacity to grieve for more-than-human others is neither natural nor inevitable. Weaving together personal narratives, theoretical meditations, and insightful readings of cultural artifacts, he suggests that ecological grief is best understood as a rhetorical achievement. As a collection of worldmaking practices, rhetoric makes things matter, bestows value, directs attention, generates knowledge, and foments feelings. By dwelling on three rhetorical practices—naming, archiving, and making visible—Barnett shows how they prepare us to grieve past, present, and future ecological losses. Simultaneously diagnostic and prescriptive, this book reveals rhetorical practices that set our ecological grief into motion and illuminates pathways to more connected, caring earthly coexistence.”
- My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism by David Gessner
- Book Description: “In My Green Manifesto , David Gessner embarks on a rough-and-tumble journey down Boston’s Charles River, searching for the soul of a new environmentalism. With a tragically leaky canoe, a broken cell phone, a cooler of beer, and environmental planner Dan Driscoll in tow, Gessner grapples with the stereotype of the environmentalist as an overzealous, puritanical mess. But as Dan recounts his own story of transforming the famously polluted Charles into an urban haven for wildlife and wild people, the vision of a new sort of eco-champion begins with someone who falls in love with a forgotten space, and then fights like hell for it.”
- Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth by Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) and Darcia Narvaez, PhD
- Book Description: “Selected speeches from Indigenous leaders around the world-necessary wisdom for our times, nourishment for our collective, and a path away from extinction toward a sustainable, interconnected future.“
- The Dinner Party also made an Eco-grief Reads list that can be found here.
Other Resources
- Climate Aware Therapy
- Find a therapist that has experience with eco-anxiety
- Eco Anxious Storytelling
- “Feeling worried about climate change is normal. Embrace your anxiety with courage and compassion and transform it into meaningful action.”
- Gen Dread Newsletter
- “A newsletter about staying sane in the climate crisis”
- Yoga for Ecological Grief
- Scroll to the bottom for a free self guided yoga course
Source: “A Climate Narratives collaboration between Grace Nosek and Meghan Wise” (2021) https://ubcclimatehub.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Climate-Doom-to-Messy-Hope-Handbook.pdf
Podcasts
- A Podcast and Practice for our Planetary Emotional Wellbeing
- Podcast and Website Description: “Love Letters to Planet Earth is a podcast and practice space, meant to nurture the connection between the planet and ourselves and find emotional buoyancy in the era of climate change. We will learn from nature’s hard work how to navigate this in between places the Earth is in so that we can remember the inextricable link between our emotional health and our planetary health in this moment of great change and crisis. In doing this there is great opportunity for deep healing.”
- BBC’s The Climate Question
- Podcast Description: “Why we find it so hard to save our own planet, and how we might change that.”
- Climate Change and Happiness: An international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change.
- Podcast Description: “Most of you around the world recognize the dangers of human-caused climate disruptions and their impacts on you, through disasters and the ripple effects, or simply due to the profound emotional weight of the issue. But there are few safe forums to reveal one’s feelings about climate change. We invert the paradigm. Here we are open about our climate emotions, as humans and from our perspectives as researchers and climate psychology experts. We put language to what you feel about the climate crisis—and also what you might want to feel, feelings you can grow and cultivate. This supports your resilience and your mental health and wellbeing. We invite other experts to join us in our conversations, and we hope you can join us too.”
- Facing It: a podcast about love, loss and the natural world
- Podcast Description: “The age of climate crisis is upon us, and grief and anxiety are on the rise. This podcast explores the emotional burden of climate change, and why despair leaves so many people unable to respond to our existential threat. Overcoming that paralysis is the first step in moving to action, and yet official climate strategies rarely address the emotional toll of climate grief and eco anxiety. Meanwhile, frontline communities — particularly people of color, indigenous communities, and other historically-marginalized groups — are experiencing the heaviest mental health impacts of climate disruption and displacement. This series introduces ways to move from despair to action by addressing the psychological roots of our unprecedented ecological loss.”
- Ted Climate
- Podcast Description: “Host Dan Kwartler unpacks the problems and solutions behind big systemic issues in bite-sized episodes. You’ll find out which bag is best for the planet, imagine our world without humans, and follow the international journey of the very shirt on your back. Yes, we’re going to talk about the bleak stuff—it’s a crisis after all—but we’ll also share little ways you can make changes in your daily life, in your towns and cities, and at your workplaces to help change climate change. Ultimately we’re aiming for some HOPE through a focus on solutions, instead of just, you know, tumbling towards inevitable doom.”
- TED Podcast: Outrage + Optimism
- Podcast Description: “Face the climate crisis head on, but understand that we have the power to solve this. Hosted by Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson this podcast about issues and politics will inform you, inspire you and help you realize that this is the most exciting time in history to be alive.”
Support Groups
- All We Can Save Circles
- “Are you hungry for deeper dialogue about the climate crisis and building community around solutions? We are too. That’s why we created All We Can Save Circles — like a book club, but a cooler, deeper, extended version. Let’s strengthen the “we” in All We Can Save. Circles were created by Dr. Katharine Wilkinson.”
- Climate Awakening
- “Share your climate terror, grief, and rage with people who understand. Join a Climate Emotions Conversation – a small group sharing & listening session about the climate emergency.”
- Good Grief Network
- “A peer-to-peer support group for people overwhelmed by eco-distress and collective trauma from social and ecological injustices”
- Work that Reconnects Network
- “The Work That Reconnects Network nurtures a regenerative and thriving world for all beings by providing support, connection and inspiration to the global Work That Reconnects community.”
Videos
- Climate Optimism: Building Our Future With Better Tools Ted Talk by Adam Dorr
- Eco-anxiety from Caroline Hickman from the Institute of Art and Ideas
- Get to Grips with Grief from Clover Hogan & Caroline Hickman
- Gritty Optimism: Hope in the Face of Climate Change Ted Talk by Trevor Slansky
- Speaker Session: Climate Psychology with Caroline Hickman from the Climate Vine
- The case for stubborn optimism on climate Ted Talk by Christiana Figueres
- The Climate Optimist Youtube Channel
Chloe is a Civil and Environmental Engineer, and graduate student at Humphrey College of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. Chloe served as a Minnesota Climate Impact Corps Member at Climate Generation throughout the summer of 2024. She is pursuing a master’s degree in Science,Technology, and Environmental Policy to develop cross-cultural competency to communicate scientific information among different communities in Minnesota. Her empathetic nature and dedication to justice will aid in ensuring that solutions have legitimacy and involve cross-boundary organizing to establish equity. In her free time she enjoys going on walks with her dogs, reading thrillers, downhill skiing and riding her bike.
Header Photo Source: “Broken Harmony” by Ildiko Nova (2019) https://understoreymagazine.ca/article/turning/
The post Resources to Combat Climate Grief appeared first on Climate Generation.
Delegates will soon gather in the Turkish resort city of Antalya for UN climate negotiations, against a backdrop of war, energy crisis and climate extremes.
At COP31, nations will try to find agreement on various issues, including climate finance for developing countries and a global “just transition” towards a cleaner economy.
This summit is unusual due to its joint presidency, which means that Australia is leading the negotiations while Turkey hosts the conference.
Outside the formal negotiations, Turkey is also pushing its own priorities as part of a wider “action agenda”, including electrification, oceans and “green industrialisation”.
In order to track parties’ positions on key negotiating points and wider issues at COP31, Carbon Brief has analysed around 100 documents and captured them in the interactive table below.
The first column shows the countries and UN negotiating blocs, the second shows the topics up for debate and the third indicates specific issues within those topics.
The final column indicates the positions that the parties have expressed on each topic. These range from “priority” – meaning the party is likely to be pushing the issue – to “oppose”, meaning it is likely to push against it.
This is a “living document” that will be updated over the course of COP31.
Please get in touch if you would like to offer additions by emailing policy@carbonbrief.org.
Brief explanations of the key issues and jargon-filled language that permeate the talks can be found below the interactive table.
Just transition
At COP30 in Brazil in 2025, nations agreed to establish a practical mechanism to help drive a “just transition” to a low-carbon economy.
Key aspects of this “Belém-Antalya mechanism” (BAM) – often referred to as the “just transition mechanism” (JTM) – were agreed during the June climate negotiations this year, but many details are missing and dividing lines remain between parties.
Parties have disagreed about the scope of the mechanism and whether it should be tied to the provision of finance.
Nevertheless, following progress in June within the “just transition work programme” (JTWP), civil society groups highlighted that getting the mechanism up and running is a “key expected outcome” from COP31.
Climate finance
Climate finance is always a highly contested issue at UN climate negotiations.
Developing countries have successfully pushed for a “work programme” on climate finance to feature on the conference agenda.
These parties see this programme as a way to pressure developed countries into providing more funding from their public coffers, specifically under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. Some are even proposing a “burden sharing” arrangement for climate-finance provision.
This comes against a backdrop of major donors cutting their aid budgets and the Trump administration in the US pressuring multilateral development banks (MDBs) to drop their climate objectives.
Developed countries, which have traditionally been responsible for providing finance, would prefer to keep a broader focus on issues such as improving access to existing finance and broadening the range of donors. Some developing countries, such as small-island states, also support these goals.
Nations have also been discussing Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement under the “Veredas dialogue”. This focuses on making all global “financial flows” consistent with climate action.
Countries have different views about what this involves, with developing countries again hoping to keep the focus on developed countries’ responsibilities to financially support them.
Adaptation and mitigation
At negotiations in June, parties were unable to agree on the details of a “global goal on adaptation” (GGA), which is intended to drive climate adaptation worldwide.
Having agreed at COP30 on a list of 59 “indicators” – ways to assess progress towards the GGA – nations now need to refine these before COP32 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is a highly technical process that involves a taskforce working out how to use and track these indicators.
Broadly, developing countries stress the importance of finance to fund adaptation efforts, rather than simply to track progress. They also want reassurances about a pledge made last year to “triple adaptation finance”.
At the June climate negotiations, negotiators also failed to make any progress when discussing the mitigation work programme (MWP) – the only formal agenda item that concerns cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Among other things, parties disagreed on whether the MWP should continue running over the next few years, or simply be brought to a close.
Global stocktake and NDCs
Back in 2023, the first “global stocktake” (GST) of the Paris Agreement set out the state of climate action and what needed to be done to set the world on course.
On mitigation, nations agreed to a package of measures, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, tripling renewable energy and “halting and reversing deforestation” by 2030.
Some of these outcomes remain contentious among certain parties, particularly large, developing countries and those with economies that rely on fossil-fuel exports.
Developing countries have persistently argued that they need more climate finance to implement the global stocktake outcomes.
Parties were meant to update their climate plans under the Paris Agreement, informed by the first global stocktake, by 2025. These plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), cover the period out to 2035.
So far, only 150 parties – responsible for three-quarters of global emissions – have submitted new NDCs.
Iran, Vietnam, Egypt and Argentina are among those without new NDCs – and the US has withdrawn its climate plan under the Trump administration.
Some parties, such as the EU, have stressed the need for countries to submit their new NDCs ahead of COP31 – and to ensure they are aligned with the 1.5C temperature limit.
COP31 will also see the launch of the second global stocktake, which will conclude in 2028.
Action agenda and other issues
Turkey will be pushing its “action agenda” priorities at COP31, including global targets for electrification, reducing waste and reducing building-sector emissions.
(The Australian “presidency of negotiations” is intending to pursue a “cover text” decision at COP31 that may capture some of these wider targets, such as the electrification goal.)
The action agenda is meant to provide a complementary track to the formal negotiations, where governments and non-state actors can advance specific, real-world solutions.
A new COP31 presidency effort dubbed the “climate implementation bridge” is also meant to complement these ambitions by turning NDC goals into an “investable project portfolio”
Some parties have explicitly signalled their support for various elements beyond the formal negotiations, in the run-up to COP31.
For example, a joint letter signed by 105 parties called for COP31 to “put the ocean at the heart of climate action” by embedding ocean-based climate action in the UNFCCC architecture.
