A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety

As a poet of our time, Mary Oliver, asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” My hope for you is that this call to action gives you a sense of purpose, a reason to engage in the world, and an unwavering awareness of your power to build the world you deserve.

What does resilient action look like? It could start with taking care of yourself so you can go on with your life. But ultimately it must become a mutually reinforcing dynamic between the personal and the collective, since part of our personal resilience results from the sense of community that comes from participating in civic life.

As climate disruption exacerbates existing structural oppression, such as racism, sexism, and economic injustice, we need to combat these structures in our daily lives. Thus the resilience I’m advocating is in fact bound up with resistance.

You don’t fight something like that because you think you will win. You fight it because you have to.

Climate change is not an impending future crisis. It is an extension of ongoing extinctions, destabilization, and rapid environmental transformation. We should resist crisis narratives for the reasons I have presented in this book, but also because they perpetuate the erasure of these legacies.

Resilience must be advocated for in culturally sensitive ways, with acknowledgement that the crises of environmental change have been impacting indigenous peoples around the globe since the age of expansion, beginning as early as the fifteenth century.

Others, however, argue that the term paves the way for further injustice. If a community is “resilient,” exploitation and damage are accepted as inevitable. Resilience can be used to justify leaving oppressive structures intact, since people are capable of learning to adjust to them.

Some view “resilience” positively, saying it is what has kept indigenous cultures alive, despite many forms of colonial violence.

•Practice mindfulness and gratitude.

•Avoid self-sabotaging habits.

•Limit your use of social media.

•Get enough sleep.

•Focus on the tasks you find fulfilling and in line with your priorities.

•Say no to requests that are not aligned with your priorities.

•Foster a support network.

•Cultivate compassion.

•Care for others.

•Visualize good outcomes.

•Create better stories.

•Celebrate successes.

•Seek beauty and pleasure

The best way to resist burnout is to commit to a mission statement that helps you triage the demands on your energy, stop performing busyness as a badge of commitment, and cultivate a daily practice of self-care. I do not mean the indulgent, consumerism-based “self-care” that allows you to escape your grief, but rather the kind that helps you heal and prioritize so you can stay in the game.