Hey OP. Kudos on acknowledging your feelings and expressing them ;)

TL;DR: your reaction makes a lot of sense, don’t stay alone with this, lots of empathy

Where I speak from : I’m a white and socially cisgendered male, 35 yo, living in France. I had the chance to go to university and to have several educations.

I have been a climate change and biodiversity collapse educator and activist for 3 years, and I’m currently struggling with crippling adhd, depression and anxiety after a rough burn out.

I try to base my opinion on the IPCC reports which I regard as the best science consensus provider on climate-related matters (more on the IPCC at the end of the post).

In my opinion, being terrified by climate change is a very appropriate emotionnal response.

What scientists say about the amount of suffering climate change already inflicts to hundreds of thousand is hard to fathom, and imagination fails to grasp how much worse it’s going to get in the coming decades.

To my understanding, humanity as a species is not under threat, and we will not all die in 50 years. But a huge amount of people already suffer and die from climate change and it’s going to get much much worse. As usual, the less privileged you are (and the less you contribute to climate change), the worse you have it.

CO2 emissions keep going up when scientist agree that they should be cut in half by 2030 and divided by 3 or 4 by 2050.

The IPBES (same as IPCC but for biodiversity) current analysis reinforces the “we’re in deep shit and we’re diving faster and faster” feeling.

And while individual action is absolutely necessary, it is by large insufficient without structural collective change.

I also feel terrorized. And so angry. And more sad than I’ll ever by able to express. And so fucking frustrated.

I found that sense of community is what keeps me going. I met some great people in environmental ngos, and getting together to do something about it is a great feeling. Having a drink together and ranting about how hard it is to witness our collective failure makes is really not as bad as doing it bu myself. And crying among friends feels a lot better than crying alone, for me.

So I wish for you to find people around you who understand the world in the same way you do, who care as much as you do. I wish for you to find safe spaces in which you can stop pretending it’s ok, in which you don’t need to explain yourself, to have a debate about whether or not climate change is a big deal, in which you can let your emotions flow. I wish for you to find meaning, belonging and even happiness in action.

Take good care of yourself, the wolrd needs you in good shape !

Btw, compiling and summarizing together papers about the mechanism and impact of climate change is exactly the job of the IPCC. They take in account thousands of papers from all the fields related to climate change, write a draft an publish it, wait for questions/criticism/corrections to be sent by all the scientists who want to contribute (for several months) and then they correct their draft and publish the final version. I recommand reading at least the key points of the “Summary for policymakers” of the 6th assessment report..

Not sure if this helps at all, but you’re not alone: I feel a sense of dread every time I find myself holding an empty plastic container.

It might feel like you’re sticking your head in the sand, but what I do – and what I suggest for people suffering from climate anxiety – is actively avoid reading reports like that. Sure, they’re informative (and it’s important to stay informed), but at the end of the day it’s not worth your mental health.

If there’s one thing we know about the problem of climate change at this point (despite what massive corporate contributors have tried to tell us) it’s that you as an individual cannot fix it and you did not contribute very much to it. Plus: you already know it’s bad. Those statistics are meant for people whose minds and behavior will be changed by them.

Instead of reading reports that are informative (but unhelpful), spend time researching who to vote for, how to get involved with organizations who are making change, and which companies are truly focused on sustainability so you can vote with your money.

Climate change is an unfortunate reality and you’ll never feel good about it, but you can feel better if you’re focusing on what you can change.

Friendly reminder: If you aren’t fighting conservatism, you aren’t fighting climate change.

We can still mitigate the effects of manmade global warming if we act right away. Unfortunately, conservatives (including neo-liberals) are hell-bent on preventing effective action from being taken. They are paid by corporations to protect corporate interests, even when it will result in billions of deaths.

If we can somehow marginalize and defeat conservatives in the U.S., we might be able to influence other nations to follow along in making large-scale changes. Fighting conservatism is how you can fight climate change.

How is a rant about billionaires and greed ever a thing to shy away from? The class war and it’s associated wealth inequality/endless growth mentality are essential drivers to the climate change problem that’s keeping you up at night. You can’t disconnect the two if you actually want the problem addressed.

I’ll do the opposite and make this long and bitter.

There is hope, look at restorative agriculture which sequesteres CO2 into the ground. It’s a bit more work than modern farming but the tradeoffs may outweigh the effort and it’s starting to get more popular.

I don’t have much faith in carbon capture technologies that are not placed at the concentrated outputs of emitting sources, but i want to be wrong. The worst part about them is oil companies will say ‘see, nothing to worry about’.

I think that RNG is going to be a huge factor.
First: because commercially it has a way to make money so anti environmentalists may bite off on it. B: gas stove snobs can keep their damn gas which should reduce political resistance.
III: even though you’re burning methane, at the end of the cycle you’ve pulled CO2 out of the air, created fuel, and have carbonaceous remains that can be put in the ground as fertilizer, overall carbon negative.
4 - As long as there are humans that eat food then there will be farms that grow crops, most crops have parts that we don’t eat like stalks and leaves n such, those remains can get dumped into an RNG reactor instead of decomposing into the atmosphere as methane, so even more reduction in GGs because methane is a greenhouse gas.

I really think RNG can have a huge effect as long as the reactors aren’t fueled by biomass that is made by chopping down trees and milling them up. I need to find out how much biomass farm waste has…

SMR nuclear is happening, if you ignore the big oil funded green peace clowns you’ll see that nuclear is an essential base load source that is reliable and safe.

Electrification is happening, more makers are making electric vehicles, more municipalities are electrifying mass transportation, even shipping is making slow progress. Heatpumps are getting viable even in cold climates.

The grids can take it. There’s multiple parts to this story but 4 main parts and the gist is that the growth in demand is not giant leaps but in small steps for now. It is likely that some of these technologies will take on S curve uptake but even then there is plenty of room for growth. If you want i can talk your ear off about this one (I’m an electrical engineer at an electric utility).

You can make a difference, join the citizens climate lobby, they are working on legislation to tax carbon production which shoul help slow the bleeding. This will be hard to pass in the US, but squeaky wheel and all that. Help them get loud. Force politicians to either say out loud that they are against it or are for it and vote out the clowns.

There’s also the idea of spraying reflective chemicals in the upper atmosphere to reduce the amount of heat that gets in. I hope we don’t do this unless we have to because it just kicks the can down the road and corpos will say ‘see, we can stop worrying now’. BUT, it absolutely can buy us more time to save ourselves, and we have the technology to do this right now.

It may seem hopeless with all of the headlines of crossing the point of no return and spiraling out of control and what not. The ‘point of no return’ is pretty vague and each headline is talking about a different problem. Most of them are talking about the 1.5 or 2 degree temp rise. Some even talk about run away effects like thawing permafrost and undersea stuff that gets released. While that is all fucking terrible I implore you to look at the absolute worst case of run away effect. It’s bad, but it’s not Venus 2.0 bad and we can buy more time if we have to.

Last, i want to talk about defeatism. It’s not too late to stop the absolute worst. Yes, there is permanent damage and we are losing species and people are fucking dieing BUT it’s not fucking over. Republicans want you to feel defeated, they want you to think there’s nothing you can do and there is no point in trying and at the same time say climate change isn’t real. Don’t be a part of the republican message. We absolutely can make a difference, we have to make a difference, and we fucking will make a difference.

If the bad things are going to happen, there’s little we can do to stop it, once it has been set into motion (no one person led to climate change). What we can do is control our response. We can do our best to mitigate what risks we can, and ultimately we can do our best to make the most of the situation we are in. That’s the one thing we can do as individuals to make things better for our future selves and our descendants, we can be compassionate to those around us and work to inspire our communities to do that too.

All in all, nothing tonight that you can think up will change the climate or the world’s response to it. We can worry about the future, but we only will know what the future holds as it occurs, so it doesn’t do much good to assume that the worst is necessarily going to happen. Catastrophizing sucks, and I know what you’re struggling with right now. Perhaps a counselor/therapist could help you understand and manage your anxious thoughts. You’re definitely not the first or only one to have these fears, so don’t feel bad about it. I hope some of the comments put you at ease and help you get some rest.

Many things are outside of your control. You were given life outside of your control, and you will die outside your control. Whether you die of cancer at 50 or climate change at 50, you die all the same.

We still have a moral duty to make the best choices that we can with the information that we know. A lot of the existential crisis though, I think, stems from a fear of mortality. Coming to grips with the fact that you must die sets you free to act rightly within the world.

Thank you for verbalising this, I’ve been feeling similarly. Like you I try to go back to the sources and read them often finding that the danger is being sensationalised by the media. Recently though I’ve seen a few papers where the findings have been much worse than is being reported and that worries me very much. I’m mostly able to only worry about things I have control over as others have suggested but the oncoming climate crisis is so encompassing and existential that I’m finding it hard to temper my worries.

Someone linked this to me a while ago cause I expressed climate despair: https://thecarbonalmanac.org/

I then found it to download for free from the zlibrary (I can‘t afford it ok), and so far it‘s good, it gives a more action focused perspective and is more optimistic than I would be.

So far it made me rethink my liberal use of cow products, while I struggle with even approaching a vegan diet, the “stop feeding into demand for cows” is a bit easier for me, I already didn‘t buy the meat for a long time and now I finally switched to an almond milk too and it‘s alright.

I also did switch my search engine to Ecosia to plant trees, it‘s not much, but maybe it helps. Works alright so far.

If you’ve never considered therapy, here is a sign to talk to somebody professionally. In my experience, existential dread is best discussed with building up a foundation of good mental health practices. A couple of more specific thoughts:

Every generation of humans have thought they’d be the last. We are a resourceful species.

What does the future hold? How will climate change impact our lives? It’s really unknown at this point. All the articles and science in the world is educated speculation.

There are new technologies being created but in a lot of ways the pandemic showed us that people really cannot seem to get it together. If you are passionate about the environment, there is many areas of activism and volunteering to get involved with.

Ultimately, you cannot control what happens with the climate or the future. A lot of times anxiety can come from situations we can’t control but so much of life is out of our hands. Learning to live in the moment and go with the flow is an art.

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I don’t have a lot of words because I’m in the same boat, but I’m really sorry that you’re having to go through this. :-(

A lot of people want you to be fearful. Fearful people make for very avid readers and sharers of media. Fearful people spend a lot of their precious time convincing other people to be fearful. Fearful people often don’t make the most rational decisions.

I’m not downplaying the problem or saying climate change is some sort of fairy story, but I am saying that it is almost impossible to have a 100% impartial birds-eye-view of what is a tremendously complex problem, especially if you just ingest whatever random media crosses your door.

There is no point beyond which the entire game is lost and we should just lie down and rot. Things can always get better, and things can always get worse. So act, get involved in local action and put pressure on government to make the right calls. Act with the hope of a better future in your heart, and save the despair for when the end is known beyond all doubt. It’s just another day at the office.

I’d say don’t let fear control you.

When fear gets too out of hand it becomes a problem; However there’s a side of fear that can also prompt us to improve a situation, where we can recognize the threat which then allows us to educate, inform, act, and build a better world.

There will be a lot of challenges to face, especially considering the limits to change based on how rampant wealth inequality is, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to feel frozen and shocked at not being able to instigate positive change.

we’re all going to die within half a century.

If it helps, this is 100% grade-A bullshit. Science does not say this. Scientists do not say this. It is absolutely a lie.

You’re welcome.