Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis - Hardcover

Wray, Britt

 
9780735280724: Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 073528072X ISBN 13: 9780735280724
Verlag: Knopf Canada, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD
A CBC BEST CANADIAN NONFICTION BOOK OF 2022
AN INDIGO TOP TEN BEST SELF-HELP BOOK OF 2022

"A vital and deeply compelling read.” —Adam McKay, award-winning writer, director and producer (Don’t Look Up)

“Britt Wray shows that addressing global climate change begins with attending to the climate within.” —Dr. Gabor Maté, author of The Myth of Normal

"Read this courageous book.” —Naomi Klein

An impassioned generational perspective on how to stay sane amid climate disruption.

Climate and environment-related fears and anxieties are on the rise everywhere. As with any type of stress, eco-anxiety can lead to lead to burnout, avoidance, or a disturbance of daily functioning. 

In Generation Dread, Britt Wray seamlessly merges scientific knowledge with emotional insight to show how these intense feelings are a healthy response to the troubled state of the world. The first crucial step toward becoming an engaged steward of the planet is connecting with our climate emotions, seeing them as a sign of humanity, and learning how to live with them. We have to face and value eco-anxiety, Wray argues, before we can conquer the deeply ingrained, widespread reactions of denial and disavowal that have led humanity to this alarming period of ecological decline.

It’s not a level playing field when it comes to our vulnerability to the climate crisis, she notes, but as the situation worsens, we are all on the field—and unlocking deep stores of compassion and care is more important than ever. Weaving in insights from climate-aware therapists, critical perspectives on race and privilege in this crisis, ideas about the future of mental health innovation, and creative coping strategies, Generation Dread brilliantly illuminates how we can learn from the past, from our own emotions, and from each other to survive—and even thrive—in a changing world.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

BRITT WRAY is a writer and broadcaster researching the emotional and psychological impacts of the climate crisis. Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, she is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where she investigates the mental health consequences of ecological disruption. She holds a PhD in science communication from the University of Copenhagen. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian and Globe and Mail, among other publications. She has hosted several podcasts, radio and TV programs with the BBC and CBC, is a TED Resident, and writes Gen Dread, a newsletter about staying sane in the climate crisis: gendread.substack.com.
 

 

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Climate and environment-related fears and anxieties are on the rise everywhere. As with any type of stress, eco-anxiety can lead to lead to burnout, avoidance, or a disturbance of daily functioning. In Generation Dread, Britt Wray seamlessly merges scientific knowledge with emotional insight to show how these intense feelings are a healthy response to the troubled state of the world. The first crucial step toward becoming an engaged steward of the planet is connecting with our climate emotions, seeing them as a sign of humanity, and learning how to live with them. We have to face and value eco-anxiety, Wray argues, before we can conquer the deeply ingrained, widespread reactions of denial and disavowal that have led humanity to this alarming period of ecological decline. It s not a level playing field when it comes to our vulnerability to the climate crisis, she notes, but as the situation worsens, we are all on the field - and unlocking deep stores of compassion and care is more important than ever. Weaving in insights from climate-aware therapists, critical perspectives on race and privilege in this crisis, ideas about the future of mental health innovation, and creative coping strategies, Generation Dread brilliantly illuminates how we can learn from the past, from our own emotions, and from each other to survive - and even thrive - in a changing world.

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FROM THE INTRODUCTION

The artists at the Bureau of Linguistical Reality, who are coming up with new language to better describe our changing world, have named a quintessential sentiment of the times brokenrecordrecord­breaking: “a recurring feeling of déjà vu, quiet terror, and slow shock which is both acute and familiar that occurs when opening a news­paper, radio program or website and reading a headline that that year (month, season, day) has broken the record for the hottest on record.” Many are struggling to stay afloat as we process the steady stream of scary environmental news that tells us things are unravel­ling even faster than scientists expected. Some lose themselves in activism, while others keep their distance or close their eyes just enough to pretend that the reality we face isn’t nearly as bad as it is. For some whole communities who may be contending with the imme­diate practical threat of hurricanes, heatwaves, floods, rising sea levels, drought, or raging wildfires, closing one’s eyes isn’t an option. Increasingly, even for those far away from hazard zones, neither is taking the time to examine one’s emotional response.

Over the last few years, especially but not exclusively in liberal circles, the term eco-anxiety has become all the rage. It describes a condition that robs sleep from those who, when all is dark and quiet, stir in thoughts of how uninhabitable the Earth will soon become. Tools are cropping up to help people cope with eco-and climate anx­iety, grief, and a pervasive sense of powerlessness to halt nature’s destruction. Self-care guides, climate-conscious therapists, and a cottage industry of coaches have emerged to help folks grapple with ecological uncertainty, find community support, and focus on the pro-environmental actions they can take. But acknowledging and reckoning with difficult emotions is still not the norm, and mental health resources are cost-prohibitive or simply unavailable for many people who need them.

Too often, though, the conversation around eco-anxiety reveals its own amnesia. Only some of us are being forced to grapple with the threat of annihilation— and the emotional weight this carries— for the very first time. For so many people who’ve been marginalized, the oppressiveness of how bad things are is a tale as old as the hills. As a white, cis-gendered, economically secure woman, I have the luxury of dreading the future (in light of problems like climate change) while others already acutely fear the present, and have long been suffering for how they were treated by dominant power systems in the past. Unfortunately, the climate crisis creates a double injustice here, as the most marginalized, those who had the least to do with creating this mess— predominantly poor people of colour— are disproportion­ately harmed by a warming world.

Eco-anxiety researcher Panu Pihkala says that waking up to the climate and wider ecological crisis is particularly hard for middle-class citizens of industrialized nations because “the world is revealed to be much more tragic and fragile than people thought it was.” This profound disruption, which can be as severe as an internal shattering, sends them into a grief-stricken process of mourning the lost future they believed would come— a future of ecological stability. This then erodes their sense of security. As more and more people who’ve been living comfortable lives wake up feeling eco-anxious, that awareness comes with a risk. If we only turn inward, to recognize this pain within ourselves, instead of looking outward, to glean a sense of implication in the far-reaching and unequal consequences of the climate crisis and our agency to improve the outcomes, little will change. Better futures will be entirely missed if we get stuck in fear and dread.

For those who might roll their eyes at the groundswell of anxiety and grief that many privileged people are now expressing, I hear you. We’re going to get this wrong if we depoliticize this pain, by not seeing its entanglement with centuries of environmental violence, racism, and domination. Without that context, we cannot be honest about who is the most vulnerable now and going forward, nor figure out how to best reduce harm. On the flip side, the tumultuous feel­ings that are on the rise are completely valid, need tending to, and present a great opportunity for justice-oriented personal, environ­mental, and social transformation.

Everyone is vulnerable to the distressing— and potentially revital­izing— power of eco-anxiety, but we don’t all have the same resources, space, or interest to harness it when other existential threats may be more immediate. My hope is that by being explicit about these inequalities in Generation Dread, this book can contribute to us get­ting better at looking out for each other, as things get harder and heat up. I am part of this generation, and I know what it feels like to go on a journey of developing critical awareness from one’s own existential fears. If you’re part of it too, no matter your age— if you want to find inner strength and also help bring about a more sustainable, just, and equitable future— you’re among those who can most benefit from reading these pages. Right, so what is it we’re dreading again? It’s the fact that we are in the midst of an escalating planetary health crisis. Much more than just climate change, the planetary health crisis is humanity’s destruc­tion of nature, and it is affecting everything from the climate to bio-diversity, fresh water, fertile soil, clean air, land cover, the spread of infectious disease, rates of chronic disease, and, as a result, the health of all living beings. It is a civilization-changing event that is well under way, causing incredible damage and deepening existing injustices. With each passing day, the realization dawns on more people with even a smidgen of environmental identity— a feeling of connection to the non-human environment— that much of what we love in the world is under threat, and so the collective sense of being traumatized grows. The demand for resources that help people ground themselves and feel capable of creating change is outpacing the supply.

Wealthy nations and elites must act on the climate crisis in order to flip the dangerous trend lines, but most are acting as though they don’t understand that to delay is to dance with their own demise. Much as we see with the covid-19 pandemic, without bold preven­tive measures in place, few to no rich countries will be spared its dev­astating effects. Just like our warming climate, pandemics are not separate from, but a symptom of, our planetary health crisis. As we continue sucking resources out of the natural world— by cutting trees in tropical forests, for example, or extracting minerals and fossil fuels— we bump into species that live in the wild places we tear into, and become hosts to their viruses. Epidemiological research shows we can prevent future spillovers and stop outbreaks from turning into pandemics by dramatically changing the way we interact with the natural world.

All this ought to compel us to rethink our relationship to nature itself. As the cries for change along these lines grow louder, denialists clamp down harder, critics police the tone of climate alarmists, climate alarmists burn out while hunting for a sign that their actions are having an impact, and doomsayers make peace with their own death and that of society. “Rational environmentalists,” arm in arm with climate dismissives, condemn emotionally charged messaging about the climate emergency with hashtags like #climatecult....

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Verlag
Knopf Canada
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
073528072X
ISBN 13 
9780735280724
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
296
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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