Climate Distress to Climate Capability

Many people feel horrible about how our climate is changing.  The UN found that the majority of adults in most countries worry about our climate, and they care about what happens to our planet. Another survey connected with 10,000 youth across ten countries. Most of the youth said they are very worried about climate change. And almost half of them said this worry is disrupting their “daily functioning.” 

As a person who has been working in the field of counselling for many years, I have seen this in a lot of my clients, students, and colleagues.

What is climate distress?

Climate distress is a term that includes eco-anxiety, climate grief, and many other feelings about our changing climate. When people are feeling anxious as they are doom scrolling or seeing the news about our changing climate, this is eco-anxiety. It might be stories about smoky skies, fires in summer, the lack of snow or frozen ponds in winter, the way rising sea levels or droughts are affecting people, crops, animals, plants, and impacting the feeling of safety in our communities.  And when you are missing the things you used to be able to rely on, this is climate grief.  For example, many are missing healthy plants and trees in your neighbourhood, blue sunny skies and lots of water in your favourite fishing lake in the summer or skiing in winter. We miss what we used to have. And sometimes it can feel hopeless believing we can’t do anything and climate impacts will continue to get worse with no way of stopping it.

It is normal to feel worried about many of these things.  And not good to get trapped in those feelings.  Our natural way of dealing with stress is to pay attention to the thing that is stressful, and then to step away from the stress and let our nervous system return to “normal”.  But if people are doom scrolling or over-focusing on world-wide events in the present and fretting about a negative future, we go into a negative thought and emotion cycle. These cycles can feel never-ending, immobilizing and bad for our well-being.

At Possible by Design we use 'climate distress' as our umbrella term. We follow the World Health Organization, the University of California San Francisco’s Stress Measurement Network, and academic frameworks.  The intent is to capture the full spectrum of people’s feelings about climate change specifically, not just ecological (or eco-) change broadly. 

How can psychology help?

I began to look to the psychology community to find resources for people about how to step away from fear and feeling helpless, and help them shift into hope-based climate actions.  We don’t even have to feel all that hopeful…just enough to say “I will see what I can do today.” 

There are several wonderful organizations that have created resources for people to learn about climate distress and things that can help.  For example, the Climate Psychology Alliance of the UK and of North America and the Mental Health and Climate Change Alliance.  These organizations have many resources related to understanding eco-anxiety, wellness and reliable climate information. Another example is the Good Grief Network that states their mission as: "Creates spaces to gather in community, process the painful feelings and realities of our time, and commit to meaningful action." 

Some resources are more climate-focused, and many of those resources suggest things for general anxiety as well as recommending “climate action.”

What specific climate actions can we take?

But…

I have found that these resources have great ideas for emotions, adaptation and resilience.  However, they make vague suggestions about “climate action”.  They don’t provide specific examples of how we can take active steps to feel our own sense of agency – our own ability to make a difference specific to the thing we are actually worrying about: the global picture of climate change.

Some of these organizations focus on emotional wellness, which is really important.  It helps to be able to reduce our isolation, and to lift ourselves out of worry and into action. Some organizations focus on emergency-preparedness, which is also more and more important these days.  

But Possible by Design is all about helping people find specific things they can do to actually bend the climate emissions curve.  We have pulled together complicated global information, and our analysis is showing that the four Climate Policy Fixes can make a huge difference. These are very specific “climate actions” that focus on asking national representatives for government policies related to our climate itself.

What is Climate Capability?

I wanted to know: Are specific climate actions helpful for people to know about and do? I kept looking for research about this and was excited to learn about what is now called “climate capability” (Horry et al., 2023).  This is an updated term that was once called “carbon capability” beginning in 2007.  Climate capability explains that there are many aspects of what helps us feel we have the capability to make a difference related to our climate: 

• Knowledge about warming trends and climate science

• How sceptical we are

• What personal actions or behaviours we are changing to reduce our impact

• Support for systemic and policy actions by governments

• Seeking information to learn more about climate

• Confidence in our ability to do these things and make a difference (self-efficacy)

This is a lovely way of looking at how people feel capable when looking at climate issues.  And early research with adolescents in Ireland showed that when a person’s rating of “climate capability” went up, their eco-anxiety also went up, but it became a motivator for them (Glynn et al., 2025).  As they learned more about climate impacts, they were more interested in making a difference. The study authors said youth-based programming should be focused on working together for systemic advocacy.

This is what we are all about at Possible by Design: helping people learn about specific actions related to government systems, and feeling capable and hopeful about making a difference to our greenhouse gas emissions.

PbD’s Wellness to Hope-Based Climate Action Framework

So, Melanie Szirony and I have been creating a new section for the Possible by Design website: the Wellness to Hope-Based Climate Action framework. We have collected ideas and many resources to support Emotional Wellness, Personal and Community Resilience, and Agency & Advocacy.  

Melanie has designed a wonderful Agency & Advocacy Quiz to help you figure out what you can do from PbD’s ideas based on your time, preferences and whether you want to do things solo or with others.  It’s quick, fun and points to specific ideas or more info! And if you are interested but feeling unsure or stuck, we have ideas on how to help you get past that.

Our Wellness to Hope-Based Climate Action section on the website will be live soon, so stay tuned!

References

Glynn, R., Dwyer, C. O., Casey, M., Sharma, S., Harrold, P., O'Connor, P., Harrold, P., & Glynn, L. G. (2025). A randomized controlled trial of the effect of a nature-based intervention on climate capability and eco-anxiety in teenagers. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, Article 1648880. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1648880 

Horry, R., Rudd, J. A., Ross, H., & Skains, R. L. (2023). Development and Validation of the Climate Capability Scale. Sustainability, 15(15), 11933. https://doi.org/10.3390/su151511933