Beyond Coping: How to Find the Strength to Take on Climate Change

It’s hard to ignore not just the scientific reports, but also the on-the-ground reality of climate disruption. It’s getting hotter and drier, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates we have about 12 years to reverse this direct trend. It’s a challenge requiring us to come together as a mature and functional human family.

Finding the strength to take on climate change.

It’s a tall order because at its root, the climate crisis is also the crisis of human relationship—how we relate to our own emotional states, those of others, and, ultimately, conflict. To solve problems with—not for— human beings, which is what this crisis requires, we need to be conflict-literate. We need to be in touch with our own emotions and feelings, which can be as scary inwardly as climate change can feel outwardly. The situation is dire: Rising temperatures in just the United States and Mexico are predicted to increase the numbers of suicide by an extra 21,000 people per year by 2050, according to a study led by Marshall Burke at Stanford University. 

Unchecked strong emotions elicited by personal and environmental stress (sometimes this is called structural violence) can usurp the mental energy we  need for sustained nonviolent action. Yet healthy human relationships are full of what cultures of restorative justice and conflict resolution call “healthy conflict”: inner and outer processes of resolving disputes that promote clarity and growth and strengthen relationships in community.

Read the story from Yes! Magazine by Stephanie Van Hook - “Beyond Coping: How to Find the Strength to Take on Climate Change.”