By Dean Burgess
Climate change doesn’t just scorch forests and melt glaciers — it also gnaws at the edges of your daily peace. There’s a name for the ache in your chest every time another headline forecasts ecological collapse: climate anxiety. It's a natural response to a world that feels like it's hurtling toward catastrophe, yet the fear it stirs can often paralyze more than it motivates. While the warming planet poses serious threats, there’s a path through the unease — one grounded in practical action, connection, and the power of agency.
Start With Tangible Wins, Not Lofty Ideals
When the problems feel planetary, it’s tempting to think only massive changes matter — but that’s where overwhelm thrives. Instead of spiraling in the immensity, anchor yourself in things that can be done today. Replace guilt-laden doomscrolling with a single committed decision: maybe it’s composting, maybe it’s joining a local cleanup. Small victories aren’t trivial — they rewire the brain away from helplessness and toward engagement. They also build momentum, which is far more valuable than perfection.
Find Community, Not Just Information
One of the quiet traps of climate anxiety is isolation — spending hours reading alone, worrying alone, feeling alone. But humans regulate emotions in relationships, not in solitude. Neighborhood climate groups, action circles, or even a recurring Zoom with like-minded friends shift the emotional weight. Not only does shared work build impact, it makes the experience of caring less lonely. In community, anxiety is heard, not hushed — and often, that’s all it needs to shrink.
Set a Media Diet With Emotional Boundaries
Being informed isn’t the same as being inundated. The stream of climate news rarely pauses, but your brain needs breaks. Schedule when and how you’ll catch up, and consider capping your consumption. Pay attention to your body — if you’re clenching your jaw or losing sleep, it’s time to recalibrate. There’s no valor in burning out on headlines; effectiveness comes from resilience, not martyrdom.
Rethink the Paper Trail and Choose Simplicity
Reducing paper use isn't just good for the environment — it's also a practical way to declutter and streamline how you work. By scanning and saving your documents digitally, you cut down on waste and make retrieval far faster and easier. Saving documents as PDFs ensures they’re universally accessible and easy to store securely. And if you need to adjust the orientation for readability, a PDF rotator helps you quickly switch pages between portrait and landscape. For anyone unsure where to start, consider this: digitizing is a small move that pays off in efficiency and environmental care alike.
Understand Your Role in the Larger Machine
Personal choices matter, but they don't exist in a vacuum. Real change also requires structural shifts — laws, policies, and corporate accountability. That’s not an argument against individual action; it’s an invitation to pair it with pressure. Call representatives, support climate candidates, participate in campaigns. Every industry has levers — push the ones you can reach. Feeling powerless often comes from forgetting you’re not just a consumer, but a citizen.
Let Yourself Feel What You Feel — Then Move Through It
Climate anxiety isn’t a personal failing. It’s a reaction to real danger, and trying to numb it only makes it louder. But it’s also not the only emotion allowed. Let grief pass through, but leave room for stubborn hope, righteous anger, even joy. The goal isn’t to feel good all the time — it’s to stay awake without getting swallowed. That’s where clarity lives, and from there, real action can begin.
The climate crisis isn’t just a fight against emissions — it’s a fight to preserve what’s human in us, too. Holding onto empathy, connection, creativity, and courage while the world lurches toward tipping points is its own kind of resistance. Climate anxiety doesn’t disappear overnight, but it also doesn’t get the last word. Every grounded step — no matter how small — helps steady the path forward. Because what’s at stake isn’t just the future of the planet, but the quality of life in the present moment. And that, in the end, is worth showing up for.
Discover the power of film to inspire change with One Earth Film Festival, where storytelling meets sustainability to educate, connect, and activate communities for a brighter future. If you want to see more of the work we have been doing, be sure to check out the “Festival Highlights” page for videos and photos from our 2025 Film Festival. Looking for our older festival work? Click here to see our “Festival Archive”.