Eco-anxiety is fear that our earth’s natural life-support systems are in the process of a collapse that will be catastrophic to life as we know it. This fear may range in intensity between a vague, pervasive sense of worry to a debilitating condition. What does Buddhism have to say about eco-anxiety, and what does it offer us if we want to be responsible citizens and true to our aspirations as Buddhists – but we also want to avoid being overwhelmed with fear, despair, or a sense of powerlessness?
Quicklinks to Article Content:
Causes of Eco-Anxiety
Eco-Anxiety is Natural in this Situation
The Challenge of Responding to Our Climate and Ecological Crisis
What Buddhism Says About Caring for Life and Facing the Truth
If you’re “lucky,” you aren’t debilitated by eco-anxiety. Eco-anxiety, short for ecological anxiety, is variously defined as “a chronic fear of environmental doom,” or “the generalized sense that the ecological foundations of existence are in the process of collapse.”[1] Like many psychological phenomena, eco-anxiety describes something almost all of us experience at some level, but we’re only diagnosed with a problematic condition when the associated thoughts and feelings interfere significantly with our everyday function.
The common understanding is that if we’re mentally healthy, we’ll be able to set aside our eco-anxiety most of the time in order to go about our lives. The evidence of environmental doom might be unnerving, but we tell ourselves it can’t be all that bad. Surely, those individuals experiencing debilitating eco-anxiety would just be upset about something else if it wasn’t our ecological and climate emergency. Humanity has created many environmental problems, but we’ve solved them before, like the depletion of the ozone layer, or they didn’t turn out to be the disaster many were predicting, like exponential population growth. No need to worry, let alone panic.
But have you ever asked yourself what would convince you that it was “that bad”? That is, bad enough to panic about?
Please bear with me while I spend a few minutes reflecting on why we might be experiencing some degree of eco-anxiety. Afterwards, I’ll briefly discuss some of the things Buddhism teaches us about responding to our ecological and climate crisis. In the next episode, Part 2, I’ll talk about how we can follow the teachings without sacrificing our sanity and peace of mind in the process.
Causes of Eco-Anxiety
Unless you deliberately choose a news source that is deeply invested in denial, or unless you deliberately and carefully avoid the news, it is becoming harder and harder to avoid awareness of our climate and ecological emergency. Heck, even if you avoid news about it, at least several times a year the evidence is right before your eyes because of unusual weather patterns that happen more and more frequently.
Unusual and unpredictable weather is having direct impacts on our lives. Recently, my Zen community had to end our 5-day sesshin (silent meditation retreat) one day early. It was heartbreaking, as we had spent months preparing, and every moment together was precious. While in retreat, the retreat leaders became aware of a severe weather warning for up to five inches of snow and freezing conditions for our retreat location, which was at 1000 feet elevation. We debated whether to end early, but some retreatants had planes to catch and jobs and families to return to, and they couldn’t afford to get stuck in the snow and ice. We ended the sesshin abruptly – not an ideal situation at all.
The severe winter weather warning was a surprise because our retreat was held in late March. When we asked the manager of retreat facility how often this kind of situation happens in the area that late in the year, she said, “Almost never.” We have moved our spring 2024 retreat to the end of April, but I wonder if this will be enough to avoid interference from weather. Perhaps we will, instead, be thrust into an early wildfire season?
In 2021, those of us living in the Pacific NW experienced a heat dome. Here’s a summary from the USDA Climate Hub website. Forgive me for sharing such a long passage, but I think it does a good job of conveying what the real-life impacts of the climate crisis can be like:
In the summer of 2021, the Northwest experienced record-breaking high temperatures from late June through mid-July. The heat wave affected Oregon, Washington, Idaho, northern California, western Nevada, and British Columbia… The regional average daily maximum temperature was nearly 30°F [~17°C] hotter than the mean of the hottest 3 months in the previous decade, and the highest temperature was 61°F [~ 34°C] hotter. Canada recorded a record temperature in British Columbia (121.3°F) [49.6°C], which is higher than the hottest temperatures ever recorded in many states, including Texas (120°F) [49°C].
For a region with average high temperature in June in the 60’s or 70’s depending on location, this heat wave caused devastating impacts. The heat dome caused over 250 deaths in the U.S. and more than 400 in Canada… Elderly people, homeless people, people who work outside, and people who do not have access to air conditioning are especially vulnerable to these impacts. In addition to health impacts, there were impacts to infrastructure. In Washington, the heat caused sections of Interstate-5 and State Route 162 buckle, causing some lanes to be closed. In Portland, the heat exceeded the design limits of the TriMet MAX system, melting train power lines and shutting down trains for a day.
Agriculture was also affected by the heat dome. Plants usually control their temperature through transpiration, releasing water through their leaves. In extreme temperatures, plants cannot transpire, and they have trouble cooling down. Even if they have plentiful water available in the soil, they will not use it to cool themselves down because of a stress response that causes them to close the pores (stomata) on their leaves. Some crops like blackberries and raspberries may pull water from their fruit. This can make fruits soft or dry, and the heat dome greatly reduced yields, with some farmers experiencing as much as 100% crop loss in parts of Willamette Valley.
In parts of the Northwest, trees and forests were damaged by the heat as well. This was most noticeable for forests in the Coast Range, where trees are not adapted to such extreme high temperatures and were in earlier stages of seasonal development. The heat made conditions worse for trees that were already suffering from the previous two years of drought, and trees displayed signs of scorched leaves. Some trees like western hemlock dropped their needles, leaving the trees bare. Many young saplings and seedlings died in the heat, and some Christmas tree farmers experienced thousands of dollars in damage.
Analysis from one scientific study of this event shows that climate change played a role in the event’s occurrence. The warming of 1.2°C since pre-industrial times (1850-1900) increased the probability of an event this extreme occurring. According to this study, a heat dome of this magnitude is estimated to be 150 times more likely in today’s climate than compared to the pre-industrial climate. Future warming would make heat events like the 2021 heat dome more frequent and intense.”[2]
The western hemlock in my backyard before and after the 2021 heat dome
Most of us human beings have a remarkable capacity to compartmentalize, to forget. Although my own back yard reached 120 degrees F during the heat dome (49°C) and I wept as my trees started dying before my eyes, I have happily appreciated subsequent summers and the absence of severe heat domes. But almost every day people somewhere experience the devastating effects of storms, floods, droughts, or wildfires supercharged by a warming climate. Lives are lost, homes and communities and livelihoods are destroyed, people suffer long-term health effects, and insurance money is hard to come by if it’s available at all.
Because of human nature, as long as our lives are relatively fortunate and peaceful, it can be difficult for us to arouse more than a passing sense of sympathy for people affected by the climate and ecological emergency in other parts of our planet. Frankly, our ability to compartmentalize is adaptive – if we reacted to every story of human tragedy that we became aware of as if it was our own, we would be completely overwhelmed and exhausted. However, our ability to put problems out of our minds if they aren’t right in front of us is a disaster when it comes to our long-term ecological situation.
Eco-Anxiety is Natural in this Situation
When I find myself downplaying the severity of our crisis in my own mind, I remind myself that the dire warnings are not only coming from environmental activists who might be overreacting like Chicken Little in the fable who runs around crying “the sky is falling” after a leaf falls on her tail. No, the dire warnings are coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is a scientific body associated with the United Nations, referred to by the acronym IPCC, and it probably represents the pinnacle of conservatism that is still based in scientific evidence. Imagine a UN-associated project with scientists from dozens of countries, collaborating on a report, and actually agreeing on recommendations. In such a situation, it’s naïve to think the process is not influenced by the political and economic interests of the participating countries.
It’s quite remarkable, therefore, that the IPCC took the unprecedented step of giving humanity a concrete deadline for action. After releasing increasingly alarming climate reports over the last 30 years, the 2018 IPCC report presented a strong, evidence-based argument that global greenhouse gas emissions needed to be cut close to 50% by 2030 in order to avoid catastrophic impacts. The report states unequivocally that greenhouse gas emissions have to be drastically reduced. Now. This is a little like the research branch of a tobacco company publicly stating cigarettes need to be phased out of existence, or like the company Amazon suddenly launching an aggressive PR campaign to urge people to live a life of simplicity and buy less stuff. If the IPCC is willing to say it, that in itself should be cause to take a very close look at our situation.
And yet, despite a small dip during the pandemic, our greenhouse emissions continue to GROW. They’re not growing as quickly as they once were, but neither are they dropping precipitously the way they need to. In fact, across the world corporations and countries continue to develop NEW fossil fuel projects, which is at the absolute top of the list of things we need to stop doing immediately.
Earth’s natural life-support systems are disintegrating. It’s not even that we’ve started to treat the earth so much worse over the last 20 years, it’s just that 150 years of extraction and consumption and pollution have stressed earth’s systems to the breaking point. The disintegration is nothing short of terrifying if you really contemplate it.
Freakish, once-in-10,000-year-events like our heat dome are scary and devastating, but it wouldn’t be so bad if we could conclude at the end of them, “Wow, that was weird,” and then recover and rest easy in knowing we will never experience such a thing again in our lifetime. Now, however, every freakish occurrence may very well be a sign of worse to come.
Water – the resource on which all life depends – is running out in many places in the world and is also contaminated by plastic and forever chemicals no matter where you get it from. The oceans have absorbed most of the extra heat our carbon emissions have caused over the last 100 years; they are fast reaching their limit of absorption, which means future emissions will have even more immediate and drastic impacts. Vast ocean currents maintain our planetary climate stability, and they may slow down or stop within our lifetimes, causing a collapse of marine ecosystems and climate effects we can barely comprehend.
As someone who studied ecology, one of the most terrifying things I witness is the loss of insects. It’s difficult for most people to notice this or care, as we generally find bugs gross and annoying. But this is the most incontrovertible evidence of ecological collapse. Once upon a time, within my lifetime, if you drove on a road trip of a hundred miles or more, you would need to stop frequently at gas stations simply to wash the bugs off your windshield. You’d have to soak the big windshield washer sponge in the soapy water and scrub hard. Even once you cleaned your windshield, the front of your car would still be covered with bug bodies. Do you ever see that anymore? I recently drove over 6 hours through a very lush area of the country and never once washed my windshield, even upon return. Chilling, when you remember that insects are the foundation of every terrestrial ecological system, after plants.
The Challenge of Responding to Our Climate and Ecological Crisis
I am perceived by some as a “climate activist.” I’ve called myself that at times. I wish I could speak to you about eco-anxiety from a position of moral authority – a place of having figured out what we need to do, how we can respond effectively, a place of having come to terms with our situation.
The truth is, I participated in only one climate action in 2022, nothing so far in 2023, and I have nothing on my horizon. I started out my climate activism in 2019 and was full of hope and determination, but – like many others – I was burned out by the enormity of the task. Speaking recently to someone who worked with me on climate back in 2019, I said that our activism had felt like trying to change the course of the Titanic ocean liner before it hit the fateful iceberg by riding next to the massive ship in a little rowboat and pushing. Not only did the effort seem lonely and futile, people would yell at you and drop garbage on your head from above. My friend agreed that this was a good analogy for how we experienced much of our climate activism.
When I was involved in activism, I couldn’t comprehend how people could ignore what was going on – how they could remain absorbed in their own personal lives, how they could conclude so readily there was nothing they could do so therefore it wasn’t their responsibility. Now I know. Over the past year and a half, I too have been absorbed in my own life, which includes taking care of my Zen center, my podcast, my home, my husband, my backyard habitat certified yard, and my beloved pets. I make plans for the future and start projects that will only reap rewards years from now. I find myself thinking that humanity is either going to course correct fast enough, or it’s not. That what I do is really not going to affect anything, and I might as well get the most out of my life while I still can.
There are groups of people out there who diligently maintain an awareness of what’s going on instead of just relaxing and enjoying their lives. Extinction Rebellion’s main form of outreach is their “Heading for Extinction (and what to do about it)” talks. With the help of others, you can cultivate awareness of our climate and ecological emergency and work yourself into what some climate activists call “emergency mode.” When you’re in that mode and look around at our world, at the way people are just going about their lives, everyone looks crazy. You feel crazy when you make plans for your life based on the assumption that everything is going to more or less be the same 10 or 20 years from now. But that emergency mode, given our human psyche, takes lots of effort to maintain. And for what? So you can feel miserable and crazy while everyone else ignores your warnings?
I haven’t been able to bring myself to go back into emergency mode in the last year and half. To be fair to myself, I have come to the conclusion that sometimes climate activists err on the side of doom and gloom, claiming there’s absolutely nothing positive happening in the world, while in fact we’re in the midst of some very radical positive changes. However, there’s no arguing that the change isn’t happening anywhere near fast enough, so the view of the emergency mode people is probably more in accord with reality than the view of most of us.
What Buddhism Says About Caring for Life and Facing the Truth
Our daily activities, no matter how simple, expand to fill our time and awareness. Our unfolding climate and ecological emergency is usually at the far edge of my awareness – it comes to the fore for a few minutes when I read about the latest supercharged storm, or dire water shortages, or the latest horrifying prediction from climate scientists. Then the emergency recedes and is replaced by the need to write a Dharma talk or mow the lawn or visit family.
This doesn’t feel good or right, though. It may not be clear to me how I should live or what I should do, but I’m pretty sure this way of responding is not embodying my aspiration to live a life of compassion, in accord with the Dharma.
There are quite a few authors and teachers who have taken up the subject of how Buddhist teachings relate to ecology and environmental responsibility. What I’m going to offer here is a brief summary of what I think my Buddhist practice asks of me, so I’ll point you toward other sources if you want a more complete treatment of the topic, including David Loy’s book Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis,[3] and Stephanie Kaza’s book Green Buddhism: Practice and Compassionate Action in Uncertain Times.[4] [ref] In addition, recently the publication Tricycle offered its second Buddhism and Ecology Summit, focused in “transforming anxiety into awakened action.” Even though it’s over, recordings should be available if you register after the fact (there’s a link on the web page for this episode at zenstudiespodcast.com). Speakers and workshop leaders included Roshi Joan Halifax, Bill McKibben, and Rebecca Solnit.[5]
As a Buddhist, my guidance when it comes to responding to my own eco-anxiety begins with my vow not to kill, but to cultivate and encourage all life. This is our first precept. At its most basic this precept means not to kill other human beings. While I don’t engage in direct violence against other people, my participation in any number of modern systems contributes to our climate and ecological crisis; human beings are dying every day because of this, not to mention other forms of life. The precept text in my Soto Zen lineage, the Kyojukaimon, says, “The life of buddha increases with life; no life can be cut off. Continue the life of buddha; do not kill buddha.”[6] All life is sacred. Sure, we need to kill in order to eat, even if it’s just killing plants. But it’s understood that any killing comes at a cost, and we should do it only when necessary. Ideally, we expand the circle of life we honor through nonviolence as wide as possible. Killing an ecosystem is definitely killing. Causing the extinction of a species is definitely killing. Destroying a culture and community through rising seas and melting ice is killing.
Sadly, so much of the killing we are involved in is not at all necessary. What is necessary, after all? Enough to keep us fed, clothed, educated, safe, healthy, and happy. We know in our hearts it is not so much – much less than many of us have or seek, although many in the world go without the basics. Despite the fact that we know relatively simple pleasures and the company of family and friends are the most important “extras” we could ask for, we indirectly cause great destruction in the name of comfort, convenience, speed, and the accumulation of wealth.
As a Mahayana Buddhist I have also taken the Bodhisattva Vows, which includes the vow to free all beings even though they are numberless and the task is literally impossible (as I discuss in Episode 216 – The Fourfold Bodhisattva Vow Part 1: Freeing All Beings). The Diamond Sutra famously describes the scope of responsibility of the bodhisattva (translation by Red Pine):
The Buddha said to [Subhuti], “Subhuti, those who would now set forth on the bodhisattva path should thus give birth to this thought: ‘However many beings there are in whatever realms of being might exist, whether they are born from an egg or born from a womb, born from the water or born from the air, whether they have form of no form, whether they have perception or no perception… in whatever conceivable realm of being one might conceive of beings, in the realm of complete nirvana I shall liberate them all.’ [9]
I care deeply for the insects in my garden, the birds at my feeder, and the grand Douglas fir trees of our forests. I care for whales, bats, trillium, and ecosystems. I care about people, including those losing their lives, health, homes, livelihoods, communities, and culture due to climate change and environmental destruction. We can’t help free beings from spiritual suffering if they are dying. An aspiring bodhisattva standing by while living things are destroyed is, to borrow a phrase from the character Jeff Green in the TV show “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “A big bowl of wrong.”[7]
In one of my favorite Buddhist teachings on bodhisattva activity, 13th century Zen master Dogen describes “The Four Ways Bodhisattvas Embrace Living Beings.” (I did a series of podcast episodes on this essay, starting with Episode 105.) The four inspiring principles begin with giving, or nongreed, and kind speech. Then we have beneficial action, which means to skillfully benefit all classes of sentient beings, caring about both their near and distant future. In other words, this is not just about responding with compassion in the moment if you happen to personally encounter a being in need. It’s about caring about the long-term, overall welfare of all living things, never drawing a boundary beyond which suffering is not our problem. Dogen says, “Foolish people think that if they help others first, their own benefit will be lost, but this is not so. Beneficial action is an act of oneness, benefiting self and others together.”[8] Finally, Dogen speaks of “identity action,” or acting as if we are in the “same boat” with all beings. To me, this is the most profound of the ways bodhisattvas embrace living beings. It is the acknowledgment of interdependence and nonseparation, which makes us responsible but also connects us intimately with all life.
Finally, there’s the fact that our Buddhist practice is about facing the truth. No matter what’s happening in our lives or in the world, Buddhism is never, ever about turning away, staying protected within a nice spiritual bubble, or using the tools of practice to simply make ourselves feel better. That is not real practice. To free themselves from fear of death, the Buddha’s disciples didn’t distract themselves with pleasant spiritual contemplations, or dwell on the rewards of an afterlife. They meditated in charnel grounds, sitting with corpses in various states of decay. The way to freedom is through the truth, no matter how daunting that truth may seem.
Naturally, at certain moments we may indeed need to rest and take refuge. We may be overwhelmed, stressed, or depressed, and need to spend time with Sangha (not talking about impending doom), or go on silent retreat, or work mindfully in our garden. But to only do this, to live in denial about our climate and ecological emergency, is avoiding the real practice.
What is the real practice, though?! Buddhist teachings contain more than enough to give a strong foundation for taking responsibility and for compassionate action, but what are we actually supposed to do? How do we face the reality of our ongoing crisis without being overwhelmed with grief, anger, depression, despair, or eco-anxiety?
In the next episode I will talk about how we can use our practice to maintain strength and mental health even as we face our climate and ecological crisis and struggle with eco-anxiety – how we can face reality but also take care of ourselves, and cultivate the perfection of endurance, or kshanti, for long-term stamina. I’ll also talk about how practice can help us challenge our own assumptions about the world and what’s possible, unleashing our imagination and helping us envision a world where all life is cherished.
Endnotes
Also see: Clayton, S., Manning, C. M., Speiser, M., & Hill, A. N. (2021). Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Inequities, Responses. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, and ecoAmerica.
[1] Wikipedia definition of Eco-anxiety
[2] https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/northwest/topic/2021-northwest-heat-dome-causes-impacts-and-future-outlook#:~:text=The%20events%20that%20led%20up,the%20air%20and%20land%20surface.
[3] Loy, David R. Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2018.
[4] Kaza, Stephanie. Green Buddhism: Practice and Compassionate Action in Uncertain Times. Boulder, CO: Shambala Publications, 2019.
[5] https://tricycle.org/events/the-buddhism-ecology-summit-transforming-anxiety-into-awakened-action/
[6] https://brightwayzen.org/bodhisattva-precepts-resources/
[9] Pine, Red. Zen Roots: The First Thousand Years. Anacortes, Washington: Empty Bowl Press, 2020.
[7] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=big%20bowl%20of%20wrong
[8] Tanahashi, Kazuaki, trans., ed. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo. Boston, MA: Shambala Publications, 2010.
