If you're feeling anxious about the fact that we are currently making the planet uninhabitable
then I want you to know that that's a completely reasonable way to feel right now and
You are not alone in a randomized poll of over 600 teenagers
57% of them said that they were feeling afraid about climate change and
It's common enough to have these sorts of feelings that there's now several terms for them
There's eco anxiety climate grief eco despair over the last year and a half
I've been dealing with a lot of climate grief basically
I just can't stop thinking about the fact that millions of people like real people alive today are
Dying or they're going to die
Because of something that is completely avoidable we can stop using fossil
Fuels but so far we've completely failed to do so
It feels completely out of control and it's depressing
This isn't a video about why I'm feeling that way that's this video
You can go check out but this is hopefully going to be a video that is
Helpful to you or to anyone that is feeling anxious about our dying planet over a month ago
Back in the before times. I talked with youtuber climate Adam about climate grief
I wanted to hear his perspective on this because he's been working on climate change for over nine years
Now and as someone who's watched his channel for a really long time
I've always been struck by the fact that he usually seems to be
Surprisingly positive in his videos and he actually often makes me laugh in them, which I find remarkable
So I wanted to ask him about that. How do you stay upbeat and in your videos?
I guess maybe the first thing to say is I don't always always manage to you back and there's some times when I crack I
Really have expressed certain aspects of what I feel and those have been really negative at times
I think I'd be weird if my attitude all the time was like it was cheerful. I think also um
what I do is
suppose I'm not
making light of climate change
I'm not saying climate change is funny and I guess I'm trying to find humor maybe in how we talk about it or
How we respond to it?
so even if I find climate change really serious and really scary and really
overwhelming I
still think that
Other things kind of around that including myself that can be and maybe should be made fun of in my last video
I said you know that I'm feeling a little bit
I've felt a lot of like climate despair and
I was surprised by how many people commented being like I had no idea other people thought this felt this way
I
Wanted to make this video partly just to be like, hey, you're not alone
what would you say to people that are dealing with like the
climate anxiety issue on their own
I guess that that been times when I felt like that I felt really alone
And in fact may be the worst time was when I went to the climate negotiations in Katowice
2018
and I got there and it just felt like
It felt like a fair almost, you know, all these like big talks and everyone cheering and at the same time
trouble emissions had gone up that year when they needed to be falling rapidly and I just felt like I
Don't know. I felt like an alien in this place and then I
Found one one of my friends there. Um
kind of journalist Jocelyn Temperley and
Just spoke to her about how I was feeling and she told me how it felt to her. And what meant her and
Yeah, just talking about it and sharing that with someone was so powerful. It's not like I didn't still feel
terrible about it I did but I felt like
like I wasn't alone and this was something we were sharing and
Not just the feeling of but sharing the impetus off
we were two people who felt how severe this was, but really keenly wanted to do something about it and
Not just then but in life in general, I guess that's been what's helped me a lot is is talking to other people who?
in the same position
Whether you know that's seen on Twitter in the comment
So, you know of this guy talking to people is great too because okay I know for me. It's helpful
It's because there have been times when I felt alone for sure, but it also like furthers the conversation, you know
It gets other people to know that this is a wider issue than they might have thought and you end up talking about
hopefully you end up talking about ways to just move forward ways to solve the problem right talking about climate change is obviously really
important but it's also important to talk about how you feel in regards to the planet and
That's something that doesn't come naturally to me
I don't know if it does for you
But it's something that for me it makes making videos like this really difficult because I feel uncomfortable
but I also have learned that it is an essential part for me in getting through this like in managing my
grief about the planet earlier this year
I started working full-time on a documentary about climate change and I realized pretty early on that
I was not going to be able to take care of myself and do that without
Support without some kind of help back in the days when I could leave my apartment
I was going every week to a climate support group
It was a really small group of very concerned people
And we just talked about things and about how he felt about the current state of affairs
And that was really useful to me any
Group that works on climate change in some way
Hopefully should act in it to some extent as a support group
and this is something that I've
Often felt when because you're thinking about the same things you are able to talk to each other and share
Bits of wisdom and empathize with each other and not saying that's an equivalent to you know
formal therapy or a formal support group
But there are informal support networks out there for people who who may be
Feeling this quite as severely or maybe before you feel it severely
so not only do I think action is the antidote to despair but
You know action with a group hopefully is an antidote to this kind of
isolation and now that I'm indoors
I'm actually meeting online with a professional therapist who is helping me navigate these emotions
I know that not everyone can afford to do that and I am so grateful that I can and again these emotions are entirely
Rational it's an extreme
situation and we should
Reasonably be having an extreme emotional response to it. That's human. This is a really serious problem
For a lot of people and if that's you remember that you're not alone
but if you are having suicidal thoughts then
Please ask for help. There's always someone that you can call no matter where you are. I will leave some
resources in the video description, please
find those and even if you're feeling less effected, it's still quite common to feel helpless in all of this and
Adam had some good thoughts on that
I guess one of the most common kinds of questions I get in situations like that
Is is it already too late for someone who?
Has this kind of almost nihilistic fear, it's too late
So maybe there's no point in doing anything. We should just all I don't know go and live on the mountain
so for someone who is kind of getting into that mindset, um
I guess I would say it's never too late. This climate change is not a binary thing and
What makes it quite?
Terrifying is also what means we can always act on it. What what makes it so terrifying is as you said every action we take
Contributes it to it in some way. Um
but every bit of woman matters, so that means every action we can take to avoid some carbon going into batma sphere and avoid some
Warming happening. That is a good thing
Like, you know, it's we set ourselves limits for climate change and those limits important but matter how hot the world gets
Oma or is always important we try and stop it getting even hotter
I feel like a similar response I get is climate change is such a big problem and no one else is doing anything for it
What can I do what like what can one person do and to me? It's like, okay
Well firstly do you hope like you vote? Because even though it's just one person's vote. You know that that matters
you know that that can make a difference and then the other thing I say to that is that there's tons of examples
Throughout history of one person making a difference right like look at gratitude Berg. It's changing
I couldn't find myself sometimes sniffing into that and like thinking maybe you know
Nothing. I do has any consequence and anything so why bother why not? I just I didn't go to the pub
But I often remember
something that um, my mom and her some of her friends told me so my mum is South African and
she left South Africa while it was still during apartheid and
You know
She I asked her once you know at the time he left
did you did you ever think you would live to see the end of apartheid and
she said absolutely not it was just unimaginable that this
huge
Fundamental problem with the society she grew up and could so radically change
and now of course she was coming at it from a particular perspective is a white South African but
Even so I guess like it just reminds me that these things which seem so insurmountable
and require such collective action can sometimes
Can sometimes be shifted I suppose I try and I try and imagine that future with respect to climate change
sometimes I try and think like
What if we do solve this? Well, what will the world look like? You know, what will it be like if?
We're not polluting their earth. We're not worried about you know, what the next 20-30 years
Will look like as a result of their the greenhouse gases were pumping into the atmosphere
Yeah, and I think that's sometimes really nice antidote to despair as well is not just focusing what we're trying
to avoid but like the beauty of the thing we might
we might create in avoiding that disaster and this is the biggest thought that keeps me going because
Imagine what this means this essentially means stopping all air pollution
Imagine the city of Delhi always looking like this instead of this
people would live longer and healthier lives and once we build the renewable energy
Infrastructure, we essentially get free energy forever and to make this transition possible
We need to transform our world into one that is way more equitable for people of all classes
races and backgrounds
And that is the world that I'm fighting for Adam and I just made a video about what you can do
What actions you can take for the climate and it's out now over on his channel?
So please check it out and subscribe over there lastly
I want to thank the thousands of you that have left positive and constructive
Comments on my videos. Thank you and
I really want this to be a positive
Community one where we can support each other and I work hard to moderate the comments
in the videos that I make but honestly sometimes it's
Really hard because there are a lot of trolls on YouTube if if you didn't know
So right now I'm looking for moderators for people to help me out and help make this a safe space for people
So if you're interested in that just go down into the description or into the comments and there's some more information there
I hope this video was helpful. Don't forget to subscribe to Adams Channel stay safe, and thanks for watching