Health, Grief, and Climate Uncertainty (Part 3)

Earth is killing us. Not on purpose, mind you (though who would blame it?). While death is part of the natural order, there really isn’t much natural about this. This is our doing, aided by the physical, geological and other natural cycles responding in feedback to our actions.

And yes, I’m going on about climate change again.

Don’t roll your eyes. If you care about your personal health, the health of your neighbors and neighborhood, the food you eat, the air you breathe, and the wildlife you enjoy, this post is relevant. And despite all the political moves to stuff climate change back in the closet, the realities are just too obvious to ignore.

You might already be suffering from health effects triggered by climate change. For example:

The Air We Breathe

Much of this summer in the northern US was dominated by wildfire smoke from fires in the US and Canada. That smoke can have devastating effects on our health. During a conference session I attended last spring, Emily Walz, MD, associated with health centers in the Milwaukee area, noted that particulate matter (e.g. PM 2.5) from wildfire smoke can cross the blood-brain barrier and cause brain inflammation. This can raise the risk of dementia, higher rates of depression and cognitive disorders in children.

A study looking at 400,000 births in southern California, according to Grist, “found that a woman’s exposure to fine particulate matter during pregnancy may increase her odds of spontaneous preterm birth by 15 percent, especially if that exposure happens during the second trimester.” These women were also 25 percent more likely to suffer postpartum depression.

Besides impacts on individuals with asthma or other respiratory conditions, wildfire smoke can be attributed to increased respiratory infections and other diseases.

Sizzlers

The temperature outside is frightful and it continues to go up as year over year we break global records.

According to Walz, for every one degree of outside deviation in temperature from normal, suicides increased by 1-7%. Studies also document increases in anger and aggression.

High temperatures have been linked to kidney disease in outdoor workers, especially in tropical areas.

Researchers in Philadelphia found that, “for every 1.8 degrees that the city’s daily minimum temperature rose above 75 degrees Fahrenheit, the risk of infant death grew about 22 percent.”

When It’s The Heat and The Humidity

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identified an increase in the prevalence of vector-borne diseases, including malaria, dengue, Lyme disease, and West Nile virus.

Got Lyme? Studies show climate change is a factor in the expanded range of ticks that carry Lyme disease, including parts of Canada where the ticks couldn’t survive before.

West Nile Virus has spread to 42 states since it was first detected in 1999. Research predicts increases in incidence and severity.

Malaria cases in Florida point to the risks of flood-prone areas with warm temperatures.

There has been an increase in locally transmitted outbreaks of dengue in the US, usually associated with tropical areas.

Food Insecurity

Since 1961, climate change decreased agricultural productivity across Africa by 34%. Between droughts and floods, declining crop yields have led to high rates of infant malnutrition.

Extreme weather can disrupt food supply chains with the loss of roads and bridges and floods can erode agricultural lands or poison them with salt water or toxic materials.

The US Department of Agriculture reports more than $2 billion in recovery funds have been awarded for livestock losses due to fire, drought, and flooding brought on by climate change in 2023 and 2024. Another $38.3 million in agricultural damage alone has been announced for South Carolina and $531 million to Georgia for damage from Helene. Many of those farmers are less likely to have insurance or health coverage, much less coverage for the mental health issues raised by repeated losses of their livelihood, leaving them vulnerable to anxiety, distress and/or suicide.

Global ocean and fresh water temperatures imperil food fish communities and the food web they rely on.

Displacement

Many countries struggle with the influx of refugees and immigration, but often lost in the discussion is that the root causes of the troubles are often related to climate change. The University of California Global Health Institute reports that “In 2023 alone, over 32 million people were displaced by climate-related disasters—more than those displaced by war and conflict combined.”

Disasters not only disrupt livelihoods, but make it harder for displaced people to start over, even if internally displaced. Those displaced populations and their host communities can see further tensions and conflicts over resources like water, fuel and land due to climate change, or worsening climatic conditions, especially in vulnerable countries. In other countries, there is simply nowhere else to go when island nations are overwhelmed by the sea.

Displacement due to climate change is already happening in the US from coastal erosion as in North Carolina, melting permafrost in Alaska, rising water levels in New Orleans, massive wildfires such as those that struck Lahaina, Hawaii and Southern California, plus hurricanes, flooding and tornadic events.

And Then We Grieve

Grief—over lost lives and livelihoods, lost landscapes and health—affects us in myriad ways from post-traumatic stress disorder to depression to anxiety to outrage. Grief that sparks community outrage has led to many changes in consumer laws, from appliances to Mansfield bars to Marsy’s Law.

There’s a power in outrage that leads to action.

Sometimes the impact of a loss builds so slowly, we don’t even realize we’re working through a classic stage of grief.

Keith Woods, formerly of NPR, who lost his Florida home to Helene (his talk starts around minute 24) used striking framing to talk about that feeling of loss of both his home and the assault on his profession. He hints at the kind of outrage from grief that leads to action. He “only” lost his home and many of their possessions, but 250 people lost their lives: “How do I complain about the troubles of one profession when the country itself seems to be sliding into autocracy?” he asks.

His keynote topic was “In Defense of Journalism,” but it was also about grief, about losing something that can’t be replaced that might not have been lost if not for climate change; and in this case, recognizing the means for relating that story is under assault by people who deny climate change exists.

The denial just adds to the uncertainty, the frustration, the grinding sense of impending disaster. It can feel like grief.

In that talk by Walz, her focus turned to the impacts of anxiety and depression on conservation workers and other environmental advocates, especially around issues of climate change.

Many attendees at the panel expressed a sense of loss of their “safe space” in the outdoors and grief for their mission in the natural world. The environmental harms they witness, uncertainty as programs they invested in end, and frustration with a lack of progress, can trigger anxiety and depression. Compounding an already fraught situation, are recent federal government and U.S. Supreme Court decisions that halted climate change initiatives, rolled back regulations, and removed many wetlands from protection.

Walz noted avoidance is maladaptive, and just allows the anxiety to build. She focused on adaptive responses and ways to find respite from our feelings of guilt and trauma by facing or redirecting them.

• Seek community
• Seek inspiration in working on adaptation and mitigation strategies
• Put efforts toward effecting change at the local level
• Model a positive attitude
• Take a break and enjoy simple pleasures.
• Turn off the TV, stop doomscrolling, and dive into an unrelated thing for a while.
• Do something that brings immediate joy.
• Prioritize things that can be accomplished.
• Share with others who have like-minded concerns
• Journal as a way to vent frustrations
• Instead of catastrophizing, reflect on what’s working.
• Engage with a spiritual community, such as one focused on nature, meditation, or a religious community.
• Express gratitude for what’s there; and share grief with others.
• Seek out social support and/or find a mentor.

If feeling so hopeless that suicidal thoughts intrude, seek professional help.

Walz identified several resources:

• A free four-course program offered by the Loka Initiative in combination with the Center for Healthy Minds and Nelson Institute at UW-Madison
• The Ecopsychopedia
• The Climate Psychiatry Alliance and its therapist directory.

I started this post suggesting that Earth is killing us (not its fault!). But it also heals, not just in food and natural medicines, but it can also ease that anxiety and help us manage our stress to find resilience. Researchers have even been able to quantify how forests preserve the health of the indigenous communities buffered by them.

According to research, spending time in nature can lead to lower risks of chronic disease and illness often aggravated by stress and serve as a coping strategy for depression, anxiety and PTSD, among other conditions.

And just maybe, reminding ourselves of Nature’s resilience will give us the recharge to move our grief to action, and do something to effect change.

Cover Photo of a trail through the woods to a Forest County, WI bog lake, by Meg Turville-Heitz

Interested in hearing when there’s a new blog post, or when a book becomes available?   Sign up for periodic news updates.

 

First Name

Last Name

Email address:

Leave this field empty if you're human: