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InnoBlog: Dealing with eco-anxiety
Do you think the climate crisis is too big of a problem to be facing alone? Do you feel powerless and are looking for a way to take real and tangible climate action? Don’t worry, you are not alone.
Eco-anxiety is on the rise and people are worried about their futures. I suffer from eco-anxiety too. I have changed my diet, travel on a more sustainable way, shifted to fair trade and eco-friendly products and invested my education and career path in the field of renewable energy. Despite all my actions, I cannot help but feel overwhelmed at times. So, I get it.
That’s why, today, I want to share with you a couple of tips about how I personally deal with this feeling and what encourages me to keep pushing.
h identifies those creating the products, methods, and materials of tomorrow. Her current role as a PhD candidate at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in the Energy Systems Analysis department helps her bring a fresh perspective to these topics, with her research focused on assessing the impact of different futuristic electric vehicle and mobility concepts on future energy systems.
- As Jane Goodall says (if you do not know who she is I encourage you to check out her work): start locally. Take actions that have a visible and direct impact, such as beach clean-ups. This helps us see our efforts are meaningful.
- My second tip is to get informed and focus on the positive. Be conscious of the situation, the extreme weather events, climate refugees, greenwashing… But don’t forget about the good stuff. There are people working very hard out there, making a truly game changing impact.
Stay positive
And to prove this, here you have a couple of good climate news that made me smile:
- You are not alone: Many celebrities are raising awareness. You likely know her from the movie Divergent, but you are probably not aware of her getting arrested at a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Shailene Woodley forages for food, sources her own water and makes her own cheese and soap. Woodley is an Oceans Ambassador for Greenpeace and co-founded the environmental non-profit All It Takes with her mom. She is an intersectional environmentalist and claims racism, sexism and any type of disparity or injustice cannot be addressed without looking at the whole picture.
- Sustainable Flights are now a thing: One flight can generate more emissions than a year’s worth of meat consumption or driving a car. Swedish airline Braathens Regional Airlines and Neste, a sustainable aviation fuel supplier, are collaborating to enable the first ever 100% sustainable test flight on a commercial regional aircraft. Neste’s sustainable aviation fuel reduces GHG emissions over its lifecycle by up to 80% compared with kerosene!
- Coldplay’s Green World Tour: Coldplay has pledged to cut direct GHG emissions by 50% compared to its previous tour. They will power their stage almost entirely with renewable energy, use sustainable aviation fuel for their air travels, all merchandising will be sustainable and ethically sourced, they will encourage their fans to use low carbon transport through an app and will put 10% of everything they earn into a good cause fund. In fact, EIT InnoEnergy-supported start-up Energy Floors are supplying the floors in the Music of the Spheres World Tour Energy Centres!
Hope these news are useful and that the stories I shared gave you back some hope. We have the tools to save the planet and there’s very amazing people out there doing good things and fighting for a better world.
Finally, if you wish to take matters into your own hands, remember to check out the Master’s programmes of EIT InnoEnergy and start building a game-changing career in sustainable energy!
