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Carnet de bord 01
Tempêtes, étincelles et feux d'artifice
Bassin Louise, Port de Québec
6°49'09.9"N 71°12'12.4"O
By William Gagnon
Building engineer LEED AP BD+C, LEED AP ND, LFA, ECO Canada EPt
By William Gagnon
Building engineer LEED AP BD+C, LEED AP ND, LFA, ECO Canada EPt
Environment | Society | Case file
Ecoanxiety and the ecological grief, the new state of mind
Imagine you are walking through a forest by yourself in the woods, with your earphones on, lost into some deep thoughts. Suddenly, a bear appears a few metres ahead and it’s running towards you. Your body gears into a reaction, survival mode that we call fight or flight. This is how various animals fled from predators, and survived. This fight or flight mode is a constructive unpleasant emotion : it’s allowed us to evolve and survive up to this day.
Now you’re on the bus home reading the news. Melting glacier. Rising sea levels. Increasing carbon dioxide levels, and politicians stalling more than ever. You’re getting this very uncomfortable feeling. Depressed, anxious, sad, outraged : Ecoanxiety is also a Constructive Unpleasant Emotion; but you need to know what to do with it. However uncomfortable it might make us feel, however annoying it might be (we have a strong tendency to avoid thinking about it), we as a species need to figure out ways to react to it. It might just save our existence on this planet.
Watching the slow and seemingly irrevocable impacts of climate change unfold, and worrying about the future for oneself, children, and later generations, may be an additional source of stress (Searle & Gow, 2010). Albrecht (2011) and others have termed this anxiety ecoanxiety. Qualitative research provides evidence that some people are deeply affected by feelings of loss, helplessness, and frustration due to their inability to feel like they are making a difference in stopping climate change (Moser, 2013).
Now humans are faced with the threat of extinction -- yet we are slow at running away from the danger. We are bombarded with negative news on a daily basis and this is causing a lot of anxiety. We are slowly building a set of emotions that is helping us as a species survive this existential threat, and ecoanxiety is one of them: it’s a constructive unpleasant emotion, if you know how to channel it.
Some of us have an easier time expressing it, like Greta Thunberg; she is very open about her Asperger’s syndrome that allows her to see only black and white. In her TED talk, she explains that it is one of the reasons why she is speaking up about climate change.
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Le soir où le ciel nous tombe sur la tête et où la fête de la Saint-Jean se replie sous la force de la tempête. Sueurs froides au milieu des bourrasques de sable et des trombes d’eau tiède. La peur se mêle au plaisir intense que procure l’adrénaline.
Dany Rondeau
Ce n’était une surprise pour personne. Ça s’en venait, en direct sur la carte interactive de Météomédia ornée de vert, jaune, orange, rouge; en direct encore quand on levait les yeux vers le nord. Et pourtant.
On était rendues au dessert. Le ciel était noir. Certaines ont décidé de troquer la crème glacée pour la course à pied. De la marina du port de Québec aux bateaux, on met huit minutes en dilettante, cinq quand il y a urgence, vingt quand on doit se cacher de l’orage derrière une voiture.
D’abord est venu le vent et, avec lui, des tourbillons de sable qui pinçaient la peau, nous tiraient des larmes. Puis le ciel s’est déchiré et a libéré ses trombes d’eau. Pas besoin d’imaginer : il suffit de se rappeler les images de typhons en Asie du Sud-Est pour comprendre la puissance de la tempête. Branches cassées, panneaux qui plient, visibilité nulle, bourrasques qui nous poussent dans le dos ou nous empêchent de mettre un pied devant l’autre. Tout d’un coup, la possibilité d’une catastrophe s’est mise à exister.
L’arrivée aux bateaux s’est faite par petits groupes de plus en plus détrempés. Rentrer les chaussures et les vêtements qui séchaient sur les filières, fermer les écoutilles et les toiles qui délimitent l’espace de vie, autant de gestes nés dans la précipitation. Certaines ont eu peur. D’autres se sont amusées, ont été impressionnées, ont partagé leurs meilleures histoires d’événements météo. Le groupe, nouvellement soudé, gardera un souvenir indélébile de cette première soirée d’expédition, une soirée où le ciel de Québec, en guise de feux d’artifice, nous a prouvé encore une fois que la nature excelle dans l’art de faire un bon show.
Chloé LaDuchesse
Not alone
In a meeting in Toronto with Innovation Norway, Alana Prashad shares with me her experience of dealing with two chronic immune diseases. Her body gets triggered when she is exposed to high levels of stress — climate change news, populist politics, and other bad news.
Our conversation drifted away from green, clean business in the Norwegian trade context to a discussion about ecoanxiety, and turning it into something meaningful:
Alana tells me that she had to find ways to uses her anxiety about the state of the planet, and turn it into something good; she tells me that she tries and sees beauty in desolated landscapes: plastic floating in oceans, rising sea levels; she finds in these bleak images the elements that are worth fighting for — the beauty, the little bits of light in the darkness, the “okay, what do we have”.
Again — action alleviates anxiety.
In Alana’s case, she had to quickly get adapted because she was becoming very ill.
Now Alana is aligning her work on fighting climate change through Innovation Norway’s business development agenda. I thought this was very inspiring — turning ecoanxiety into climate action. I was stunned. I left our meeting empowered, and convinced that we’d change the world together, somehow.
