A lot of people think we don't know how to solve climate change. So we could go from climate denial to climate despair.

It's impossible to know how many people like Ruttan Walker have experienced climate despair as a mental health crisis, but despair is all around us: in our own momentary but intense reactions to the latest bit of climate news, in pitch-black memes and jokes about human extinction, even in works of philosophy and literature.

There appears to be a fine balance for educators between safeguarding the mental health of students who might feel climate despair on the one hand, and inspiring students to take personal climate action on the other by presenting the facts of this unprecedented and existential threat to humanity.

Climate despair

Meaning

Noun

Synonyms