How Does Climate Fatigue Hurt Our Efforts?

Around the world, people are very, very tired. “Factor in recovering from the pandemic, inflation, and global stressors,” Emily Ballesteros wrote in TIME, “and you’ve got a recipe for complete physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion.” 

Levels of exhaustion are increasing due to a host of factors, including the unsustainable lifestyle imposed by capitalism, economic stresses such as low incomes and unattainable housing, and the powerlessness many people currently experience regarding global issues such as war, violence, and the climate. It’s this last issue that is giving rise to a particular kind of exhaustion, which has its own name: climate fatigue.

What Is Climate Fatigue?

Climate justice, as an emergent, urgent arm of social justice, has given rise to new language and terminology that NPQ has reported on in the past. This language includes eco-grief, defined as “the anguish and despair we feel when the places we live in and love deteriorate, along with these places’ ability to provide us with solace.”

NPQ has also written about climate anxiety or eco-anxiety, the specific and chronic fear of the damage being done to the environment worldwide. “Caused by the impacts of the climate crisis,” NPQ noted, “it can be additionally aggravated by structures of racism, casteism, sexism, ableism, socioeconomic oppression, and ageism.”

As NPQ and others have reported, these new and escalating climate-related feelings are changing the face of mental health care. Mental health organizations have formed to address the needs of activists and others in the field. Practitioners are starting to listen to the “historically ignored knowledge of survivors, youth, frontline defenders, and those with lived climate-related experiences to understand better how to provide a fully encompassing environmental and mental health—or environ(mental)—approach that includes climate, social, and cultural justice.”

The danger in our climate information overload is short-circuiting attention spans. The message can be tuned out, even when it matters deeply.

To the list of new climate-related emotions, we must add climate fatigue. Dr Rasha Bayoumi, associate professor of psychology at the University of Birmingham Dubai, described climate fatigue to Fast Company as “more of a fear and worry” than climate anxiety. “The main difference,” according to Bayoumi, “is the emotional impact here, which is the sense of impending doom. With climate fatigue, it’s another stage where you’re emotionally exhausted and desensitized to prolonged exposure to all the information.”

Bayoumi characterized climate fatigue as a process. A person might start to feel anxiety about the environment first before it shifts to fatigue “when you feel helplessness and hopelessness as humans when you get exposed to it over and over.”

Information Overload

Part of the problem facing nonprofits, grassroots groups, and anyone who works to protect the environment is an overabundance of information. Information about the climate crisis is everywhere, from print and digital news to social media to art forms such as films and short stories or novels. While not all the information bombarding readers, viewers, listeners, or social media users is accurate, it’s still everywhere. News stories mentioning the climate crisis reached a record high in the United States in 2021, according to research from the University of Boulder-based Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO). Newspaper coverage of climate change jumped 114 percent in October of that year compared to the previous October.

Activists and others who work to support the environment may be less likely to voice their fatigue, or seek rest or help for their feelings of overwhelm.

In theory, more stories would mean more focus on a pressing issue, but the danger in our climate information overload is short-circuiting attention spans. The message can be tuned out, even when it matters deeply. A 2021 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health discussed the impact of social media messages about climate change on young people ages 18 to 26. Those surveyed reported “a strong sense of behavioral inefficacy about climate change” due to the social media posts. According to the study, “there is a growing body of research evidencing that exposure to information about climate change through sources such as these can reduce efficacy beliefs and increase climate anxiety.”

Information overload can also lead to burnout, even among those committed to the cause. Activists and others who work to support the environment may be less likely to voice their fatigue, or seek rest or help for their feelings of overwhelm. As NPQ wrote, climate-related anxiety and fatigue “in activism circles is under-attended and often ignored in favor of wholly investing oneself in the movement. In the process, activists risk facing burnout, eventually becoming detached from the work they care deeply about.”

Lessons in Hope

Along with detached participants or people disengaging from a cause they once cared passionately about, how does climate fatigue impact the field? As early as 2008, faith-based organizations worried “disaster fatigue” was overwhelming donors, according to Philanthropy News Digest, and climate crisis disasters have only increased since then. Are people less likely to give when there are so many urgent climate causes to give to and so many mounting disasters, from wildfire or flood relief to air pollution control?

Related to the problem of fatigue about climate news, according to a 2022 survey by the Harris Poll and Vanguard Charitable, more than 50 percent of Americans said that “when a crisis (e.g., natural disaster, humanitarian crisis, economic crisis) occurs, they do not know where to find reputable information on how to direct a monetary donation to support those in need.” That survey also found that only 37 percent of American donors had given half or more of their donations to disaster relief efforts.

To combat climate fatigue, groups can take a lesson in tone. Another name for climate fatigue is apocalypse fatigue, based on the idea that much of our global coverage about the environment is dismal, dystopian, and inevitable: that we are destined to fail. However, research suggests that more positive news may have a greater impact, leading people to take action, make changes small and large, and give more.

“Are we telling a story of despair and so-called inevitability?” nonprofit Climate XChange asked in a report about covering the climate crisis. “Are we telling a story about negative emissions, feedback loops, tipping points, or other things most people don’t understand at all? Or are we telling a story of hope, possibility, and human agency? More importantly, are we making it clear when we talk about this that there are choices that we can make, which will determine what kind of future we are going to have.”

Contrary to the excess of bad news, the fight for climate justice is full of positive developments, from promising research in food and energy sustainability to the advocacy of young people and groups doing the work. The experts interviewed by Fast Company focus on the actions taken by young adults that can help cure climate fatigue and look ahead toward a future that can be changed. “Climate reporting and related conversations only tell us what we already know,” Professor Tadhg O’Donovan, chief scientist at Heriot-Watt University, told the publication. “The reporting could be more hopeful,” he said, “highlighting the progress made while acknowledging much more to do.”