ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 14 January 2022
doi: 10.3389/fclim.2021.738154
Toward a Taxonomy of Climate
Emotions
Panu Pihkala*
Faculty of Theology and HELSUS Sustainability Science Institute, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
There is a growing evidence that emotions shape people’s reactions to the climate crisis
in profound but complex ways. Climate emotions are related to resilience, climate action,
and psychological well-being and health. However, there is currently a lack of research
about the array of various climate emotions. There is also a need for more integration with
general research about emotions. This article conducts a preliminary exploration of the
taxonomy of climate emotions, based on literature reviews and philosophical discussion.
The term emotion is used here in a broad sense, as is common in climate emotion
research. Because of the urgency of the climate crisis and the lack of previous research,
this kind of exploration is aimed to be helpful for both practical climate work and for future
research which would include more systematic reviews of the topic. Research items
which discuss at least five different climate emotions, based on empirical observations,
are used as major sources and a table about them is provided. Climate emotions are
discussed on the basis of interdisciplinary research. The article considers many aspects
of the phenomena of climate anxiety and climate grief.
Edited by:
Nino Antadze,
University of Prince Edward
Island, Canada
Reviewed by:
Christopher Lyon,
McGill University, Canada
Annamaria Lammel,
Université Paris 8, France
*Correspondence:
Panu Pihkala
panu.pihkala@helsinki.fi
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Climate Risk Management,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Climate
Received: 08 July 2021
Accepted: 21 December 2021
Published: 14 January 2022
Citation:
Pihkala P (2022) Toward a Taxonomy
of Climate Emotions.
Front. Clim. 3:738154.
doi: 10.3389/fclim.2021.738154
Frontiers in Climate | www.frontiersin.org
Keywords: eco-anxiety, climate anxiety, climate change, emotion, feeling, affect, ecological grief, eco-anger
INTRODUCTION
The Significance of Climate Emotions
The climate crisis is rapidly growing more intense globally. In the 2000s, scholars have started to pay
more attention to the complex ways in which emotions are related to the climate crisis. This topic
is sometimes called the affective dimension of climate change: broadly, it includes many kinds of
affective phenomena which are called by different words in various disciplines, including feelings,
emotions, affects, and moods (Smith and Leiserowitz, 2014; Hamilton, 2020). In this article, the
concept of emotion is used as a general term for these phenomena, which is a usual method in
related research (Gonzáles-Hidalgo and Zografos, 2020; Landmann, 2020; Neckel and Hasenfratz,
2021). Climate emotions are defined as affective phenomena which are significantly related to the
climate crisis, even though there may be many kinds of factors influencing people’s emotions at a
certain moment—such as the general situation in one’s life, one’s temperament, daily events, social
dynamics, and climate change impacts (see the discussion of various factors in Gonzáles-Hidalgo
and Zografos, 2020; Hamilton, 2020).
Emotions are related to the climate crisis in many ways. The various phenomena related to the
crisis cause various emotions in people and many contextual factors have an effect on them. Climate
emotions have been found to be related to for example behavioral reactions (e.g., Nabi et al., 2018),
psychological well-being and health (e.g., Berry et al., 2018), and to moral issues (e.g., McQueen,
2021). These kind of dynamics have been much discussed in general emotion research (see Barrett
et al., 2016), and while research on climate emotions has started to draw from that research, more
integration would be needed.
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the psychological impacts of the ecological crises (for early
reflections, see Fritze et al., 2008). In the background, there was
pioneering work in eco-psychology about ecological grief and
other difficult “eco-emotions:” emotions which are significantly
related to ecological issues (e.g., Macy, 1983; Glendinning,
1994/2007). With the rise of interest, this older eco-psychological
material gained more attention (Buzzell and Chalquist, 2009).
In the 2010s, there was growing research about the
relationship between emotions and pro-environmental behavior
(Salas Reyes et al., 2021). During the final years of the 2010s,
eco-anxiety and climate anxiety became much-discussed topics
in media (Pihkala, 2020a), and scholars started to extend the
research on a broader range of emotions and mental states
(Albrecht, 2019). The term mental state is here used to refer to
phenomena which often include emotions, but consist also of
other things and can be temporally longer: a prime example is
how anxiety can feature both as an emotion and a mental state
(cf. Kurth, 2018).
Climate change, which started to be called the climate crisis,
became gradually a focal point in research and discussion about
eco-emotions. Research on climate emotions began to grow (e.g.,
Nabi et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2018). There is also a recent
wave of popular, partly research-based books which focus on the
broad topics of climate anxiety and/or climate grief, but include
discussion about many emotions (e.g., Gillespie, 2020; Ray, 2020;
Salamon, 2020; Newby, 2021).
General research about emotions is a very wide field, and
there are numerous different ways that researchers from various
disciplines use related terms, such as feeling, affect, and mood
(for overviews of emotion research, see Barrett et al., 2016;
Scarantino, 2016). Also in research about climate emotions, there
also be discerned many different terminological approaches.
Some scholars operate with a more narrow definition of emotion,
as many emotion researchers do: in this approach, “emotion”
means conscious feelings that can be named and which have an
object. Others use the concept of emotion broadly to describe a
wide array of feelings, including both unconscious bodily feelings
and conscious experiences of feelings (for an overview, see
Hamilton, 2020, p. 35). This broad use is very common in both
public discussion and interdisciplinary research, although some
researchers prefer to use the concept “feeling” as the broad term.
Furthermore, the rise of affect studies has brought new
attention to both the immediacy of feeling and the collective
aspects of feeling (Gregg and Seigworth, 2010). The concept of
“affect” is usually used to refer to unconscious bodily feelings,
but there are various uses of the term (see, for example,
the definition of “ecological affect” by Cunsolo Willox et al.,
2013). The rise of affect studies has generated new disputes
around emotion terminology, and the whole field of emotion
theory is experiencing some turbulence (e.g., Scarantino and de
Sousa, 2018). In research about climate emotions, significant
scholarship has recently been made which utilizes affect theories
(e.g., Bristow, 2019; Hamilton, 2020; Verlie, 2022; about ecoemotions and affect theory more broadly, see Bladow and Ladino,
2018b). This plurality and complexity in emotion theory provides
challenges for climate emotion research and leads to the research
tasks of this article.
The practical dimension of climate emotions is seen for
example in the efforts of researchers, communicators and
educators in seeking for emotions which would support proenvironmental behavior. It has been pondered how emotions
could be evoked or channeled in ways which would promote
resilient behavior both on individual and collective levels (Salas
Reyes et al., 2021). Research is ongoing and it has been found
that climate emotions do indeed influence behavior significantly,
but the dynamics seem to be very complex and there are
no simple solutions to these practical questions (Chapman
et al., 2017). For example, various researchers have argued
whether guilt or pride would be a better motivation for proenvironmental behavior, but recent research suggests that this
may be case-dependent and many contextual factors include
the dynamics (Adams et al., 2020). Thus, there is a need for
more research about the relationship between various emotions,
climate action, and contextual dynamics. A fuller knowledge
about the array of various climate emotions can help in
this research.
A growing body of research has found that climate emotions
are connected in complex ways with psychological well-being and
health. This research has often focused on varieties of worry,
anxiety, and grief (Ojala et al., 2021). Many observations about
various emotions have been made in this research, but there is
a need to know more about the array of emotions related to
these issues.
Another major area related to climate emotions is morality
and ethics. There are numerous ethical issues related to the
climate crisis, and emotions play various roles in them. Some
climate emotions have been discussed as moral emotions,
especially guilt, shame, anger, and grief (Cunsolo Willox and
Landman, 2017; Jensen, 2019; Antadze, 2020; Pihkala, 2020a),
but more research is needed about the various moral emotions
related to the climate crisis.
There thus emerges a task to explore further the various
climate emotions that can exist. This task is made more intense
by the strong urgency of the climate crisis, which is worsening
rapidly. This research article engages in that task. The aims will
be discussed in more depth after reviewing briefly the history of
eco-emotion research, especially as it relates to climate emotions
and to the task of this article.
A Brief History of Research on
Eco-Emotions
Scholarship on the affective dimensions of environmental
problems is now growing fast (Gonzáles-Hidalgo and Zografos,
2020; Ojala et al., 2021; Salas Reyes et al., 2021). This can be
seen as a welcomed change, since for many years the affective
dimension was neglected. While already in the early 2000s some
pioneering scholars started to explore the various emotions that
can be related to environmental issues (Böhm, 2003), research
remained scarce for long (for an early overview, see Kals and
Müller, 2012). Important milestones in this process have been
the formulation of the concept of solastalgia, which means placerelated sadness and other related emotions (Albrecht et al.,
2007), and the generally growing interest about “eco-anxiety,”
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Aims of the Research
Self-praising Emotions (Pride), Other-praising Emotions
(Elevation, Admiration, Awe, Being Moved, Gratitude,
Love), Other-suffering Emotions (Compassion, Empathy,
Emotional Contagion), Threat-related Emotions (Fear,
Anxiety, Hopelessness), Hedonistic Emotions (Joy, Pleasure,
Amusement)” (Landmann, 2020). This taxonomy is given special
consideration in this research article. It is peculiar that sadness
or grief is not included in Landmann’s scheme, although her
research article mentions those emotions. Another striking
omission is hope: hopelessness is included, but not hope.
The aim of this interdisciplinary research article is to further
explore the array of prominent climate emotions. It continues
the insightful work of scholars such as Landmann (2020) who
have tried to bring more clarity to the array of eco-emotions (see
also Hahnel and Brosch, 2018), but focuses on climate emotions
and reviews the topic in the light of interdisciplinary research and
literature. Scholars have called for increased attention to the wide
variety of possible climate emotions (Neckel and Hasenfratz,
2021). This article aims to identify gaps in the literature and to
construct a preliminary taxonomy of various prominent climate
emotions. This is an initial research venture and more work
will be needed in the future to validate and possibly extend or
modify the taxonomy. However, the taxonomy aims to already
now inform research about pro-environmental behavior, to help
develop therapeutic interventions and to foster personal insight.
It may also contribute to thinking about public health policies
in relation to climate change. The article aims to increase our
knowledge about climate emotions, which makes it possible to
apply its results and insights in behavior or influence programs.
The great urgency of the climate crisis highlights the need for
climate research, including this preliminary study of the array of
climate emotions.
The major research questions are:
As was mentioned above, researchers and those who work with
climate action are growingly trying to explore people’s climate
emotions, both for the sake of simply understanding people
and for the sake of channeling emotional energy to constructive
responses to climate risks (e.g., Nabi et al., 2018; Wang et al.,
2018; Verlie, 2019; Hamilton, 2020; Salas Reyes et al., 2021).
In these endeavors, the plurality of emotion theories brings
certain challenges: what theories should or could be used to
capture important aspects of people’s climate emotions? Usually
the studies simply observe certain emotions and do not use any
wider frame or taxonomy. Knowing more about the scope of
various climate emotions would help to explore them further in
both research and practice. In the current situation, it is possible
that certain important climate emotions have received very little
or no attention in research, because of the lack of frameworks
and taxonomies—and because of the relatively new character of
climate emotion research as a field.
Recently, Hiser and Lynch (2021) insightfully explored
university students’ climate emotions and decided to use
psychologist Robert Plutchik’s theory of emotions and microemotions, and some younger scholars have already picked up this
approach (Coppola, 2021). Plutchik is one of those researchers
who have tried to capture basic, primary or universal emotions:
emotions which could be recognized around the world via facial
expressions and other signs (Scarantino, 2016). Several scholars,
such as Ekman & Cordaro, Izard, Levenson, and Panksepp have
proposed slightly different lists of basic emotions. For example,
Ekman and Cordaro proposed seven basic emotions in the strict
sense: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, contempt, and
surprise (see overviews and analysis in Tracy and Randles, 2011).
There is much ongoing debate about these influential theories.
Some scholars oppose the whole idea of universal emotions and
emphasize the role of the social, cultural and linguistic context
for emotions. Others emphasize the cognitive construction of
emotions (for a useful overview of these theories and debates, see
Scarantino, 2016).
It seems that it will not be easy to capture all relevant climate
emotions by using any of these theories of basic emotions. First,
the lists differ from each other, and it is difficult to choose
which one to use. Second, because the climate crisis is a deeply
moral issue, there are numerous moral emotions at play here.
All of these emotions are not well-captured by theories of basic
emotions: for example, guilt features prominently as a climate
emotion (e.g., Jensen, 2019), and neither Plutchik or Ekman
included guilt in their lists of basic emotions. This has led scholars
to add moral emotions to taxonomies of eco-emotions (cf. Böhm,
2003; Landmann, 2020). Also Hiser and Lynch (2021) decided to
modify the taxonomy of Plutchik in their analysis: they replaced
disgust with shame.
One of the only wider efforts to provide a taxonomy of
environmentally relevant emotions is the insightful article
by Landmann (2020), which brings together earlier research
and makes new proposals. Her proposal is the following:
“Self-condemning Emotions (Guilt, Shame, Embarrassment),
Other-condemning Emotions (Anger, Disgust, Contempt),
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- Which climate emotions feature prominently in
existing research?
- Based on (a) general emotion research and (b)
interdisciplinary research on eco-emotions, which climate
emotions would seem to deserve more attention, even though
they have not yet been much studied in relation to the
climate crisis?
- What could a taxonomy of the prominent and potentially
prominent climate emotions look like?
- What kind of observations about these climate emotions
can be made on the basis of an interdisciplinary discussion
about them?
The first three research questions are addressed in Results and
the fourth one in Discussion. Methodologically, the article is a
combination of literature reviews and philosophical discussion.
It provides a semi-structural review (Snyder, 2019) and the
Discussion forms a narrative review. Existing scholarship about
climate emotions is reviewed and it is discussed in relation to
interdisciplinary environmental research. The taxonomy that is
constructed is not a taxonomy in the strict sense, as used in
some natural sciences: there is much debate in emotion research
about taxonomies and the relations between various emotions
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TABLE 1 | Climate emotions in key sources.
References
Nature of the source
and field of study
People whose
emotions are
discussed
Method
Climate emotions and feelings notably
discussed
Caillaud et al. (2019)
Research article,
ecopsychology
145 French and 92
German students of
psychology
Questionnaire
about collective
emotions
Embarrassment, empathy, fear, guilt,
indignation, sadness, surprise
Cunsolo Willox et al.
(2013)
Research article,
emotions and human
geography
70 Inuit in Labrador,
Canada
In-depth interviews
Anger, anxiety, depression, disorientation,
fear, frustration, sadness, feeling
uncertainty, worry
Hamilton (2020)
Dissertation (DPhil),
human geography and
other disciplines
General observations,
empirical material
related to participants
of eco-emotional
workshops
Analysis of
“emotional
methodologies” in
relation to
eco-emotions
Much discussion about anger, anxiety,
fear, grief, hope and hopelessness. Many
other emotions discussed more briefly,
such as despair, empathy, feeling troubled
and disturbed, frustration, guilt, love,
overwhelm, sadness, shame
Anxiety,
depression,
melancholia,
numbness, trauma
Hickman et al. (2021)
Research article,
planetary health
10,000 Children and
young people (16–25 y)
from 10 different
countries
Online survey by
Kantar TNS,
interdisciplinary
analysis
Survey included: anger, anxiety, betrayed,
despair, fear (“afraid”), grief, guilt,
helplessness, hurt, indifferent, optimistic,
powerlessness, sadness, shame (“feeling
ashamed”)
Abandonment,
anxiety,
depression
Hiser and Lynch (2021)
Research article,
education and
community
engagement
150 undergraduate
students at University
of Hawai’i
Semistructured
focus group
interviews
Use of five emotional categories: anger,
fear, hope, sadness, shame. Mention of
disappointment, frustration, hopelessness,
feeling inspired, overwhelm,
powerlessness, worry
Anxiety,
numbness, panic,
shock
Hyry (2019)
Report
2070 Finns (age 15+
years), a representative
sample
Online survey by
Kantar TNS
People were asked about 26 climate
emotions and all gained at least some
recognition: anger, anxiety, aversion,
boredom, dejection, depressive feelings,
desire for reparation, empowerment,
excitement, fear, feeling of
meaninglessness, frustration, grief, guilt,
hope, feeling inadequacy, interest,
irritability, powerlessness, rage,
rejection/denial, remorse,
skepticism/doubt, shame, stagnation
Anxiety,
depression, strong
fear
Jovarauskaite and
Böhm (2020)
Research article,
climate risk research
215 Lithuanian climate
experts
Questionnaire
Contempt, disappointment, fear, guilt,
hopelessness, indignation, regret,
sadness, shame, sympathy, worry
Kleres and Wettergren
(2017)
Research article, social
movement studies
Climate activists from
North and South
Qualitative
interviews,
theoretical
discussion
Focus on anger, fear, guilt, hope. worry
included under fear. Discussion about
feeling motivated.
Marczak et al. (2021)
(preprint)
Preprint of research
article, climate
psychology
A diverse sample of 33
people in Norway
In-depth interviews
Alienation, anger, anxiety, confusion,
consolation (in natural environments),
feeling depressed, despair,
disappointment, disgust, disillusion,
distrust, empowerment, fear, frustration,
fury, gratitude, grief, guilt, hope,
hopelessness, insecurity, irritation,
isolation, loneliness, overwhelm,
powerlessness, rage, feeling responsibility,
restlessness, sadness, skepticism, shame
(“ashamed”), terror, urge to act, worry
Anxiety,
depression,
“having a
breakdown,”
negative
rumination
Martiskainen et al.
(2020)
Research article
Climate protesters in 6
cities
Interviews,
theoretical
discussion
Anger, anxiety, concern, despair,
disempowered, fear, hopeful,
hopelessness (“loss of hope”), sadness,
feeling “strong.” “Motivations” discussed
separately from emotions.
Numb (“no
emotions”)
Minor et al. (2019)
Report
646 Greenland
residents
National survey in
Greenland
Angry, disgusted, fear (“afraid”), guilty,
happy, hopeful, hopelessness, sad
Mental states
discussed
(Continued)
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TABLE 1 | Continued
References
Nature of the source
and field of study
People whose
emotions are
discussed
Method
Climate emotions and feelings notably
discussed
Ojala (2012a)
Research article,
environmental
psychology
293 Swedish
12-year-olds
Questionnaire
Fear (“felt scared”), isolation/loneliness
(“felt like others don’t like me”), joy (“i have
laughed,” “felt happy”), sadness (“felt
sad”), unhappy (“not felt happy,” “down
and unhappy”), worry (“felt worried”)
Smith and Leiserowitz
(2014)
Research article, risk
analysis
Nationally
representative
American sample,
1,001 adult
respondents
Online survey by
Knowledge
Networks
Anger, depressed, disgusted, fear
(“afraid”), guilty, helpless, hopeful,
interested, sadness, worried
Verlie (2019)
Research article,
environmental
education and affect
studies
Undergraduate
sustainability students
in Australia
Theoretical
discussion based
partly on empirical
observations
Focus on anxiety, frustration, grief, guilt,
hope, overwhelm, sadness. Mention of
disappointment and several other
emotions.
Depression,
trauma
Verlie et al. (2020)
Research article,
environmental
education
32 Australian
environmental
educators’ views of
their students’
eco-emotions
Online survey,
study
co-conducted by
undergrad
students
Anger, anxiety, bored, frustration, guilt,
hope, hopelessness, isolated/lonely,
overwhelm, resentment, sadness. Brief
mentions of many other emotions.
Anxiety, apathy,
distress,
restlessness,
uneasiness
Mental states
discussed
Included are peer-reviewed studies and published survey reports which discuss at least five different climate emotions with at least some empirical support.
The exception is that one preprint, Marczak et al. (2021), is included because it directly observes a variety of climate emotions.
Emotion and feeling words are in alphabetical order. Some emotions have been coded and the original term is in brackets, for example Fear (“afraid”).
Anxiety and Depression are listed both as emotions and, if strong forms of them are discussed, as mental states.
kinds of affective phenomena with the term emotion. In this
research article, it was decided not to try to discuss the various
meanings that different scholars give to the term emotion, since
that would be a huge task. The aim is to provide resources for
further research which may bring more clarity about the various
affective forms related to “climate emotions,” such as affects
(Cunsolo Willox et al., 2013), bodily feelings, and moods (see also
Landmann, 2020; Salas Reyes et al., 2021).
The varied character of relevant sources provided
methodological challenges. Climate emotions are discussed
with various terms. Some studies focus on these subjects, while
others discuss it only as one part of their research agenda. Some
emotions have been researched more, while others have remained
in the shade. As was seen in the Introduction, the research field
is new and complex, and the complexities of emotion research
in general make it even more difficult. Furthermore, the existing
studies have charted only the climate emotions of certain people
in certain places and countries. It is impossible to make strong
claims of universality of any single climate emotion on the basis
of existing research or even to compare all the studies with each
other, because the studies, their methods, their subjects, and their
linguistic choices differ.
It is also clear that climate emotions may be difficult to
perceive even when effort is made to do so. There is a growing
body of research which shows that social norms and psychosocial
factors may prevent either participants or even researchers from
noticing difficult emotions, such as shame or sadness (e.g.,
Norgaard, 2011; Lertzman, 2015; Stoknes, 2015; Hoggett, 2019).
Several large surveys have been made about climate emotions,
but they rely on people’s self-recognition skills, and it seems
(Scarantino, 2016). This is a preliminary taxonomy of climate
emotions, an initial effort to move toward a fuller understanding
of the scope of climate emotions.
The structure of this article is as follows. First, the methods
and materials are portrayed. In Results, the outcomes of the
review of existing studies are presented and a proposition
for a taxonomy of climate emotions is made. In the rather
long Discussion section, these emotions are discussed from the
point of view of interdisciplinary environmental studies. Finally,
strengths and limitations of the study, along with important
themes for further research are explored.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Methodologically, this study is situated in interdisciplinary
environmental research. It is a combination of a semi-structural
review (Snyder, 2019) and a narrative review. Literature reviews
and various forms of philosophical analysis are used to explore
emotions related to climate change and the climate crisis. These
are called climate emotions. The term emotion is used broadly,
following the trend in related research (cf. Gonzáles-Hidalgo
and Zografos, 2020; Landmann, 2020; Neckel and Hasenfratz,
2021). When the issue is evaluated from the perspectives of
various branches in research about emotion, feeling, and affect,
it becomes clear that this broad concept of climate emotion—
and its upper-level terms, eco-emotions (Stanley et al., 2021)
or “Earth emotions” (Albrecht, 2019)—includes many kinds of
affects, feelings, emotions, and moods (Gonzáles-Hidalgo and
Zografos, 2020; Hamilton, 2020). In other words, the use of terms
in related studies varies and scholars seem to depict various
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discuss those emotions were marked into the table: a full table
including all the mentions of those emotions is a possible topic
for future research. If a certain emotion seemed to be important
in relation to the climate crisis, based on general emotion theory
or general scholarship about eco-emotions, but that emotion was
missing from the climate emotion research which was reviewed,
then that emotion was included in the taxonomy, with a reference
to general sources which discuss that emotion.
The author is aware that there may be many kinds of
subjectivity and researcher bias in this kind of methodology. A
strident effort was made to construct the taxonomy as carefully
as possible, but future research with full systematic review
methodology should review the initial taxonomy. The urgency
of the topic and the preliminary character of this research are
once more emphasized: the aim is that this research helps further
research and practice, even though there are evident limitations.
On a whole, however, emotion research is a difficult subject, and
there is much disagreement altogether about taxonomies that
various scholars have produced (Scarantino, 2016). It is difficult
to avoid all subjectivity in relation to this research area, and at
least one’s discipline strongly influences one’s selections.
Third, the taxonomy was discussed in relation to
interdisciplinary research, and emotion words were grouped
together in this discussion. This grouping is not intended to be
any strict categorization: it simply shows connections between
various emotions and enables discussion about them. Certain
emotion words which were not much discussed in previous
research are mentioned here, bringing more tones to the climate
emotions. This discussion is, broadly defined, philosophical in
nature, although it does not manifest any single philosophical
stance. It has characteristics of a narrative review: it delineates
trends in what has been researched and what has not. A few
existing, broad surveys of climate emotions are used as references
to the existence of many of these climate emotions (especially
Hyry, 2019; Hickman et al., 2021), but it was not possible in this
research to evaluate the prevalence or statistics related to these
emotions. It seems evident that there is some overlap between
some of the words that researchers use. A nuanced study about
those meanings would include difficult theoretical work about
definitions of emotions and their relations with each other, which
is a subject for future research.
evident that some climate emotions are easier to notice or admit
than others. Dynamics related to identities may influence people’s
perceptions: they may not wish to admit to feel certain climate
emotions. A profound array of factors influences people’s—
including researchers’—abilities and willingness to recognize
climate emotions, including cultural influences, social norms and
traditions, worldviews and religions, personality traits, the level
of the person’s emotional literacy, and so on. It is well-known in
general emotion research that for example language (Lindquist
et al., 2016), culture (Mesquita et al., 2016), and various social
factors (Fischer and Manstead, 2016) shape people’s emotions
and their descriptions of them.
Because of all this difficulty, a full systematic review of
previous research was regrettably not possible yet. Semistructural review methods have been recommended for topics
such as this, where many disciplines are involved and the sources
differ from each other (Snyder, 2019). This initial study aims to
provide resources for future research which could use systematic
review methodology and for example double coding of emotion
words together with meta-analyses. As part of the semi-structural
review procedure, it was decided that studies which discuss at
least five different climate emotions with at least some empirical
support were given special emphasis. As will be seen below, the
climate emotion words in these sources were collected to Table 1,
together with a brief description of those sources.
More specifically, the research procedure was as follows.
First, previous research about climate emotions and especially
the taxonomies or lists of them was reviewed. Database
searches were made with relevant keywords such as climate +
emotion/feeling/affect, and climate + various emotion words
such as anger or anxiety. The emotion words which were
used in searches were picked up from earlier research, such as
Landmann’s (2020) categorization and major surveys (Smith and
Leiserowitz, 2014; Hyry, 2019). Relevant studies had also been
gathered over the years as part of the research profession of
the author.
The amount of possible source material was immense. The
emotion words found in the studies were collected and compared.
Key sources were gathered into Table 1, and many sources which
were used in support of the discussion are mentioned below
in section Climate Emotions in Previous Research, categorized
under research fields and topics. The key sources are peerreviewed articles published in academic journals, dissertations
and science-based reports. One preprint (Marczak et al., 2021)
was included because it directly studies climate emotions, but
the results are not based on this preprint. The secondary
sources consists of texts which discuss one or many climate
emotions, but less than five, and the amount of empirical support
in these texts varies. The secondary sources mainly include
peer-reviewed research, but also science-informed books about
climate emotions.
Second, after the literature reviews, their results were
compared with earlier taxonomies of eco-emotions, especially
Landmann’s (2020), and also with general emotion theory
(Barrett et al., 2016). An initial taxonomy of prominent or
potentially prominent climate emotions was then constructed,
and its results are seen in Table 2. Examples of sources which
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RESULTS
Climate Emotions in Previous Research
Numerous research articles and books were found which
discuss climate emotions either by the term emotion, feeling or
affect. Of this vast material, 14 studies which discuss at least
five different climate emotions with at least some empirical
support were chosen as major sources. These sources can
be divided into two subgroups: first, peer-reviewed studies
which discuss many different climate emotions on the basis
of empirical observations (Ojala, 2012a; Cunsolo Willox et al.,
2013; Kleres and Wettergren, 2017; Verlie, 2019; Hamilton, 2020;
Jovarauskaite and Böhm, 2020; Martiskainen et al., 2020; Verlie
et al., 2020; Hiser and Lynch, 2021), and second, published
surveys which have explored self-reports of many climate
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TABLE 2 | An initial taxonomy of climate emotions and certain closely related mental states.
Emotions and mental states
Examples of sources about this emotion as a
climate emotion
Examples of sources about
this emotion as an
eco-emotion
Amazement, awe, wonder
Sezen-Barrie et al., 2020
McShane, 2018; Zhao et al.,
2018; Landmann, 2020
Böhm, 2003
Other emotion
research sources
(only included if no
other sources)
Included in
Landmann’s
(2020) taxonomy
Surprise-related emotions
Surprise
Caillaud et al., 2019
Disappointment
Jovarauskaite and Böhm, 2020; Hiser and Lynch,
2021
Confusion
Stoknes, 2015 [Marczak et al., 2021]
Feeling disoriented, upset,
troubled, disturbed
Cunsolo Willox et al., 2013; Hamilton, 2020
Shock and trauma
White, 2015; Woodbury, 2019; Kaplan, 2020;
Susteren and Al-Delaimy, 2020
Feeling isolated
Ojala, 2012a; Kretz, 2017; Verlie et al., 2020
x
Lertzman, 2015
Pihkala, 2020c
Threat-related emotions
Fear
Caillaud et al., 2019; Hickman et al., 2021
Worry
Ojala, 2012a; Cunsolo Willox et al., 2013
Anxiety (in milder forms)
Martiskainen et al., 2020; Hickman et al., 2021
Dread
Clark, 2020; Haltinner et al., 2021
Helplessness/powerlessness (in
mild or moderate amounts)
Smith and Leiserowitz, 2014; Hickman et al., 2021
Feeling overwhelmed (in mild or
moderate amounts)
Verlie, 2019; Verlie et al., 2020
Terror, panic
Hiser and Lynch, 2021 [Marczak et al., 2021]
x
x
Sadness-related emotions
Sadness
Hyry, 2019; Hickman et al., 2021
Grief
Hyry, 2019; Hickman et al., 2021
Solastalgia
Cunsolo Willox and Landman, 2017; Albrecht, 2019
Yearning
Randall, 2009; Comtesse et al., 2021
Longing
Randall, 2009; Comtesse et al., 2021
Feeling “blue,” feeling “low”
Hyry, 2019 [Marczak et al., 2021]
Feeling lonely
Kretz, 2017; Verlie et al., 2020
Strong anxiety-related feelings
Strong anxiety
Hyry, 2019; Hickman, 2020
Helplessness, powerlessness
(feeling these strongly)
Hickman, 2020; Budziszewska and Jonsson, 2021
Feeling strongly overwhelmed
Lewis et al., 2020; Verlie, 2022
Strong depression-related feelings
Strong depression
Berry et al., 2018; Hyry, 2019
Feeling meaninglessness
Budziszewska and Jonsson, 2021
Hopelessness
Jovarauskaite and Böhm, 2020; Martiskainen et al.,
2020
Feeling numb
Lifton, 2017; Martiskainen et al., 2020
x
Emotions closely related to guilt and shame
Guilt
Smith and Leiserowitz, 2014; Hyry, 2019; Hickman
et al., 2021
x
Shame
Hyry, 2019; Hickman et al., 2021; Hiser and Lynch,
2021
x
Embarrassment
Caillaud et al., 2019
x
Feeling inadequate
Hyry, 2019
Regret
Jovarauskaite and Böhm, 2020
Remorse
Hyry, 2019
(Continued)
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TABLE 2 | Continued
Emotions and mental states
Examples of sources about this emotion as a
climate emotion
Examples of sources about
this emotion as an
eco-emotion
Other emotion
research sources
(only included if no
other sources)
Included in
Landmann’s
(2020) taxonomy
Emotions related to indignation
Indignation, moral outrage
Caillaud et al., 2019; Jovarauskaite and Böhm, 2020
Feeling betrayed
Hickman et al., 2021; Jones and Davison, 2021
Disgust-related emotions
Disgust
Smith and Leiserowitz, 2014; Minor et al., 2019
Aversion
Hyry, 2019
Resentment
Andrews and Hoggett, 2019; Verlie et al., 2020
x
O’Dell-Chaib, 2019 (dissertation)
Anger-related emotions
Anger
Hyry, 2019; Hickman et al., 2021
Rage
Hyry, 2019 [Marczak et al., 2021]
Frustration
Hyry, 2019; Verlie, 2019
Feeling irritated
Hyry, 2019 [Marczak et al., 2021]
x
Envy-related emotions
Envy
No
McGrath et al., 2018
Sabini and Silver, 2005;
Lewis, 2016a
Jealousy
No
McGrath et al., 2018
Sabini and Silver, 2005;
Lewis, 2016b
Admiration
No
Landmann, 2020
Fischer and Manstead,
2016; Lomas, 2016
x
Feelings of hostility
Contempt
Jovarauskaite and Böhm, 2020
Feeling skepticism, doubt
Hyry, 2019 [Marczak et al., 2021]
x
Feeling bored
Hyry, 2019; Verlie et al., 2020
Schadenfreude
[Unpublished research manuscript on “partisan
schadenfreude” in relation to climate change:
Webster et al., 2021]; brief reflections in Cox et al.,
2018
Fischer and Manstead,
2016
Many kinds of positive emotions
Interest
Smith and Leiserowitz, 2014; Hyry, 2019
Feeling an urge to do something
good
Hyry, 2019 [Marczak et al., 2021]; Hoggett and
Randall, 2018
Lertzman, 2015;
Feeling motivated
Kleres and Wettergren, 2017; Hamilton, 2020
Excitement
Hoggett and Randall, 2018; Hyry, 2019
Empowerment
Hoggett and Randall, 2018; Hamilton, 2020
Feeling of being moved
Stollberg and Jonas, 2021
Feeling determined
Hamilton, 2020; Verplanken et al., 2020
Joy, pleasure, happiness
Ojala, 2012a; Minor et al., 2019; Pickard et al., 2020
Elevation
No
Landmann, 2020
x
Amusement
No
Landmann, 2020
x
Pride
Bamberg et al., 2018
Adams et al., 2020; Landmann,
2020
x
Macy and Brown, 2014
Landmann, 2020
Gratitude
Hamilton, 2020 [Marczak et al., 2021]
Hope
Smith and Leiserowitz, 2014; Minor et al., 2019
Optimism
Hamilton, 2020; Hickman et al., 2021
Togetherness, belonging
Pipher, 2013; Pickard et al., 2020
Love
Gillespie, 2020; Hamilton, 2020
Care
Cunsolo Willox and Landman, 2017; Jensen, 2019
Empathy
Caillaud et al., 2019; Hamilton, 2020
Sympathy
Jovarauskaite and Böhm, 2020
Compassion
Hamilton, 2020; Ray, 2020
x
x
Hoggett and Randall, 2018
x
x
Landmann, 2020
x
If there is no source available about this emotion as a climate emotion, then (a) other eco-emotion studies or (b) general emotion studies are mentioned as sources.
Only a couple of sources are mentioned for each emotion, and emphasis has been given on studies and surveys with a large number of respondents/subjects.
The few preprints that have been included are marked with [brackets].
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emotions (Smith and Leiserowitz, 2014; Caillaud et al., 2019;
Hyry, 2019; Minor et al., 2019; Hickman et al., 2021). Several
of these studies were conducted either under environmental
psychology or environmental education. One preprint was
included as a supporting source (Marczak et al., 2021) because it
directly discusses a wide array of climate emotions, but the results
were not based on this unpublished research.
It was found that many studies include discussion of affective
phenomena which are not exactly emotions but can include many
emotions, such as stronger anxiety, depression, shock, and panic.
These and certain others, such as feeling numb, are here called
mental states. It was difficult to pick a name for these phenomena,
since they are multifaceted. Some of them may include mental
health disturbance, but they are not only that. While the concept
of mental state is also used in various disciplines in various
connotations (see Goldman, 2006), it is here used simply to
refer to these emotion-related phenomena which are not exactly
emotions, at least not only. This complex dynamic is evident
for example in relation to various forms and formulations of
“climate anxiety” and “climate depression” (Pihkala, 2020a). One
may feel anxiety and depressive feelings in an emotion-like
manner, but these concepts also refer to the wider phenomena
of anxiety and depression. In relation to several sources, it was
sometimes difficult to tell which connotation(s) the author(s) had
in mind.
Table 1 depicts these 14 important sources and the
supplementary preprint (Marczak et al., 2021). It includes
information about their subject, method, and the emotions
and/or mental states discussed prominently in them.
Important secondary source material was found in several
disciplines and research areas. This material was used in
conceptualization of the proposed initial taxonomy of prominent
climate emotions and in the interdisciplinary discussion:
2017; Kemkes and Akerman, 2019), psychosocial studies
(e.g., Weintrobe, 2013; Lertzman, 2015; Hoggett, 2019),
environmental communication and adaptation studies (e.g.,
Moser, 2013), education or youth studies (e.g., Nairn, 2019;
Jones and Davison, 2021), affect research (Bladow and
Ladino, 2018a; Bristow, 2019), environmental philosophy
(e.g., Antadze, 2020; McQueen, 2021), and environmental
education (e.g., Ojala, 2013, 2016; Bryan, 2020; Pihkala, 2020b;
Verlie, 2022). General studies about emotions related to
environmental issues were also consulted (Böhm, 2003; Kals
and Müller, 2012; Gonzáles-Hidalgo and Zografos, 2020).
When pondering about potential climate emotions which have
not been much studied yet, the general literature about emotion
theory was used (e.g., Frijda, 1986; Goldie, 2010; Barrett et al.,
2016; Lomas, 2016; Scarantino and de Sousa, 2018), in addition to
the interdisciplinary literature about environmental issues which
touches upon emotions, which was mentioned above.
The Initial Taxonomy of Climate Emotions
The selection of which emotions would be included in the
taxonomy was partly a difficult one. Many different climate
emotions were mentioned in the studies. However, some
prominent eco-emotions and moral emotions were either
omitted or very little discussed. The selection that was made was
informed by an analysis of a large amount of related research, but
it is clear that other choices could also have been made, especially
in relation to which nuances of various emotions were included.
However, the selection of some climate emotions was easy,
because they were discussed in almost all of the most relevant
studies. These are fear/worry/anxiety, sadness/grief, guilt/shame,
and hope/empowerment. Most studies also featured some
discussion of anger or frustration. Several studies mentioned
nuances or related forms of several of these emotions, such as
feeling helpless or feeling embarrassed. Interestingly, when the
array of these very commonly discussed climate emotions is
compared with theories of basic emotions, it can be discerned
that these are many similarities (see Tracy and Randles, 2011).
However, surprise, disgust and contempt have received more
attention in basic emotion theories, as well as in several studies
about eco-emotions in general. These emotions were included
in the taxonomy and their role as climate emotions is briefly
discussed in the Discussion.
All the environmentally relevant emotions proposed by
Landmann (2020) were either found in climate emotion research
or then added to the taxonomy. However, key sources about
climate emotions testified to the common existence of several
other climate emotions. Since the climate crisis is a moral issue,
it is logical that there are many moral emotions in relation to it.
For example, there are feelings of disappointment, moral outrage
and desire to act. Furthermore, there are various hostile emotions
toward people who manifest different climate opinions on related
moral issues.
There is various vocabulary about feelings of togetherness and
belonging. Because this emotional dimension seems to feature
prominently for example in climate activism, these emotion
words were added. Envy and jealousy are very common emotions
- Earlier research about taxonomies of environmentally relevant
emotions (Landmann, 2020).
- Studies which have discussed some climate emotions as part of
their focus on climate anxiety and/or eco-anxiety (Kelly, 2017;
Hickman, 2020; Pihkala, 2020a,b; Verplanken et al., 2020;
Budziszewska and Jonsson, 2021; Marczak et al., 2021; Stanley
et al., 2021).
- Studies which focus on specific climate emotions, such
as climate grief (e.g., Randall, 2009; Cunsolo Willox and
Landman, 2017; Cunsolo Willox and Ellis, 2018), solastalgia
(for overviews, see Albrecht, 2019; Galway et al., 2019);
ecological guilt (e.g., Jensen, 2019; Adams et al., 2020), ecopride (e.g., Bissing-Olson et al., 2016), climate anger (Kleres
and Wettergren, 2017; du Bray et al., 2019), and climate
hope (e.g., Ojala, 2012b, 2017; Bury et al., 2020). Terminology
about these emotions varies, and often the formulations of
“ecological X” or “eco-X,” with X referring to a certain
emotion, are used. Some of these studies focus on several
climate emotions, some only on one.
- Scholarship in various disciplines about people’s affective
responses to climate crisis, such as environmental psychology
(e.g., van der Linden, 2017; Nabi et al., 2018; Wang et al.,
2018); human geography (e.g., Head, 2016; Head and Harada,
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Empowerment, Belonging, Togetherness, Connection, and Love,
Empathy, Caring, Compassion, many positive emotions are
grouped together: ones related to motivation, determination
and an urge to act (section: Motivation, Urge to Act,
Determination), pleasure, joy, and pride (section: Pleasure, Joy,
Pride), hope and empowerment (section: Hope, Optimism,
Empowerment), feelings of belonging (section: Belonging,
Togetherness, Connection), and feelings of love and care (section
Love, Empathy, Caring, Compassion).
Certain general observations are in order about these
emotions and the ways in which they are grouped together here.
In relation to ways of grouping them together, it should be
noted that there are several ways in which that can be done.
One option would be to apply some of the categorizations
which are used in previous research. For an example of this, see
Landmann’s (2020) categorization of many important ecological
emotions/feelings into Self-condemning, Other-condemning,
Self-praising, Other-praising, Other-suffering, Threat-related,
and Hedonistic emotions. However, it was felt that these
categorizations would not capture all the aspects of the climate
emotions which were deemed important in the analysis. In
addition, there are complex issues related to the directionality
of emotions as self- or other-directed. It seems that in many
cases, a particular emotion can be predominantly self- or otherdirected, but not solely so; for example, there is both self-oriented
anger and other-oriented anger. Furthermore, there are collective
forms of many emotions, such as collective guilt, which further
complicates the categorization of emotions into simply self- or
other-oriented. And finally, the issues related to valence are
complex (for wider reflections on these dynamics of emotions,
see Solomon and Stone, 2002; Bamberg et al., 2018; Bellocchi and
Turner, 2019).
As a result of these complexities, it was decided that the
grouping was to be done simply on the basis of (a) closeness
between emotions and (b) technical reasons, the latter meaning
that there is a suitable number of subchapters in this section;
it was not deemed reasonable or even possible to discuss each
emotion separately. This grouping aims to help researchers
and readers from various fields to better grasp the variety of
climate emotions.
It should be emphasized that the taxonomy does not reflect
any balance in occurrence of these emotions and mental states.
There is not enough research available to make any fuller
estimations of the prevalence and commonality of these various
emotions, and manifold contextual factors shape their occurrence
and even the names that emotions are given. Some emotions do
seem to be relatively common in the groups and countries that
have been studied, such as sadness and fear, but further research
is needed. There are many gaps in current research; for example,
there is relatively much research evidence of strong forms of
climate grief, while there is much less research about climate
shame, even though many studies and public discussions point
strongly to the existence of that. The initial taxonomy which is
produced in this article will hopefully help, for its part, future
research to further explore many related dynamics.
The intensities of these emotions may also differ. Some
note of this has been made in the discussion: strong feelings
(Frijda, 1986; Goldie, 2010; Barrett et al., 2016) and while
discussion about them was not found in climate emotion sources
or eco-emotion sources, they were added to the taxonomy. There
has also been critical discussion about the omission of them from
theories of basic emotions: for example, both Plutchik and Ekman
did not include envy/jealousy in their models (e.g., Sabini and
Silver, 2005).
Several mental states were selected to be included: shock,
trauma, strong anxiety, and strong depression. There were
two main reasons for this. First, these mental states feature
prominently in climate emotion research, and second, their
manifestations often include many climate emotions. It should
be mentioned that the concept of stress featured also quite
prominently in studies.
The taxonomy is seen in Table 2.
DISCUSSION
In this Discussion section, the selected emotions will be discussed
in relation to several issues. Their basic character as climate
emotions or mental states is briefly discussed, and relevant
research is introduced. Issues related to morality and proenvironmental behavior are mentioned, but space limits do not
allow full discussions of these wide topics. Since the range of
emotions included in this article is so broad, it has naturally been
impossible to cite all relevant studies on each of them.
The proceeding of the discussion and the manner of grouping
the emotions together is as follows. Surprise-related emotions,
including amazement, and disappointment, are grouped into
section Amazement, Surprise, Disappointment, Confusion.
Because shock, trauma, and feeling isolated can be closely
related to this phase of encountering climate issues, they are
discussed next in section Shock, Trauma, Feeling Isolated.
Fear- and anxiety-related emotions are grouped into section
Fear, Worry, Anxiety, Powerlessness, Dread, including worry,
powerlessness, helplessness, and dread. Sadness-related emotions
are discussed in section Sadness, Grief, Yearning, Solastalgia,
including solastalgia, a special kind of ecological grief/sadness.
Strong anxiety and strong depression are separated into their
own section in section Strong Anxiety, Depression, Despair.
Guilt and shame, complemented with feelings of inadequacy, are
grouped into section Guilt, Shame, Feeling Inadequate, Regret,
together with embarrassment and regret. The emotions related
to moral outrage and disgust are given their own emphasis
in section Feeling Betrayed, Disillusion, Disgust, separated
from more general reflections on anger and rage in section
Anger, Rage, Frustration. In section Hostility, Contempt, Feeling
Discontent, Aversion, envy is discussed, because it seems to
feature in climate matters, even though there is of yet little
research about it. While anger and disgust were already discussed
earlier, the hostile emotions which include elements of them are
given special attention in section Envy, Jealousy, Admiration.
These include contempt, feeling discontent, aversion, and
schadenfreude (feeling pleasure when something bad happens
to someone else). Finally, in sections Motivation, Urge to
Act, Determination, Pleasure, Joy, Pride, Hope, Optimism,
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numerous implicit depictions of these various surprise-related
emotions in studies about ecological issues. People tell of the
amazement they have felt when they have received information
about how bad the ecological crises are, both globally and locally
(e.g., the implicit discussion of amazement about climate crisis
in Hoggett and Randall, 2018). Since these stimuli are problemrelated, they lead to negatively valenced feelings of amazement
and surprise; in other words, to disappointments, shocks, and
disgust-related responses (Böhm, 2003). A telling example is the
array of negative emotions and feelings felt by the Irish people
whose coastline is eroding because of climate change (Phillips
and Murphy, 2021).
These responses are often intimately related to moral outrage
or indignation, which are discussed below in section Feeling
Betrayed, Disillusion, Disgust. However, there are also positively
valenced experiences of “eco-amazement:” surprises related to
ecological recovery or social progress related to environmental
politics. These are closely connected with feelings of pleasure
and sometimes also with pride, if the person feels somehow
part of the developments which are deemed good (see section
Pleasure, Joy, Pride below). In addition, there are the feelings
of amazement, awe, and wonder in people’s experiences of
environments, which have received much attention in fields
such as environmental aesthetics, environmental education, and
environmental psychology (see e.g., Houser, 2014, Chapter 3;
McShane, 2018; Zhao et al., 2018), but this is not the place to
discuss these further.
of helplessness and powerlessness are discussed together with
strong anxiety and strong depression (section: Strong Anxiety,
Depression, Despair), while milder forms of these emotions
are discussed in connection with other threat-related emotions
(section: Fear, Worry, Anxiety, Powerlessness, Dread). Involved
are difficult discussions about whether some of the emotions in
the taxonomy are simply different forms of certain emotions,
and there are many different views about those questions in
emotion research.
Another issue to note is the temporal dimension. Some
of these emotions are typically experienced for a brief time,
while some others are more akin to long-term moods. A clear
example is the way in which shorter anxiety is situated in
the group of threat-related emotions, while stronger anxiety
is situated together with strong depression, another longerlasting phenomenon. Many of the emotions mentioned here can
manifest in various temporalities, and naturally the embodied
experiences of them may also differ.
It would seem to be typical for climate emotions that they
manifest together with various other emotions, in a plurality
of compositions (for the general phenomenon of experiencing
multiple emotions at a time, see Lewis, 2016a, p. 277). This
complexity and the question of which climate emotions may
often produce combinations must be left for future research. For
example, many scholars have pointed out that climate grief and
climate guilt tend to manifest together, at least in affluent societies
(e.g., Jensen, 2019; Pihkala, 2020b; Marczak et al., 2021).
Finally, it should be mentioned that no balance has been
sought in the array between what are commonly called positive
emotions and negative emotions. Many emotions which have
been traditionally situated in either category are included
here. Insightful observations of the complexities of such
categorizations and the uses of the concept of valence have been
made (Solomon and Stone, 2002; Bellocchi and Turner, 2019),
and this article does not engage further in those discussions.
Shock, Trauma, Feeling Isolated
Shock and trauma are mental states which can include many
emotions, but also numbness. Because the ecological crisis is so
vast and devastating, many people have been feeling shocked
by it. There are naturally various intensities of these shocks.
Some of them remain more manageable, while in other cases
some of them can lead to difficult processes of stronger trauma.
These mental states are closely related to grief processes, but a
differentiation should be made between various forms of climate
grief, because not all processes of climate sadness include as much
trauma. Grief and sadness are discussed below in Sadness, Grief,
Yearning, Solastalgia.
There is a burgeoning research interest about “climate trauma”
(White, 2015), and several different connotations of trauma have
been probed in this context. First, there are the more easily
measured trauma effects of events which are related to the climate
crisis. For example, the Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
impacts of climate change -influenced natural disasters have been
studied (Chen et al., 2020). These can include for example many
feelings of anger and despair. Second, there are the indirect
traumatic impacts of the climate crisis, which can be studied
with the frameworks of secondary trauma and vicarious trauma
(Pihkala, 2020c). Third, even more widely, there are the ambient
impacts of the climate crisis, which cause traumatic stress to the
amount that several terms have been proposed to capture the
effects, such as “pre-traumatic stress” (Kaplan, 2020; Susteren
and Al-Delaimy, 2020) or “mid-traumatic stress” (Pipher, 2013).
The concept and phenomenon of climate anxiety is closely
related to this (Clayton, 2020; Pihkala, 2020a). Furthermore,
Amazement, Surprise, Disappointment,
Confusion
Amazement and surprise have both been suggested to be
primary or basic emotions, which have universality and easily
perceived facial expressions (Scarantino, 2016). Disappointment
is closely tied with these emotions, resulting from a negatively
perceived surprise or other stimulus (Craib, 1994); one might
also use such terms as chagrin or feeling aghast, astonished or
astounded. Closely linked with amazement and surprise, people
have often been found to feel confusion about climate change
and the required behavior (e.g., Lertzman, 2015; Stoknes, 2015).
Confusion often contributes to experiences of anxiety, where
one wonders about what would be the best response to a felt
threat which includes uncertainty (see sections Fear, Worry,
Anxiety, Powerlessness, Dread and Strong Anxiety, Depression,
Despair below). Sezen-Barrie et al. (2020) have studied the role
of wondering as part of the emotional and cognitive reactions
toward climate change.
Especially confusion and disappointment as related to climate
matters have been discussed in studies, but in addition, there are
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the former, functioning is maintained, but in the latter, worry—
usually in the form of strong rumination—becomes paralyzing
(Ojala et al., 2021).
The burgeoning research on “climate anxiety” actually studies
many different anxiety-related issues, including worry and
rumination. Feelings and emotions which commonly manifest
in connection with climate anxiety include fear, grief, and guilt
(Clayton and Karazsia, 2020; Cunsolo et al., 2020; Pihkala,
2020b). Furthermore, there are evidently various levels of anxiety,
ranging from strong anxiety to those emotion-like manifestations
of anxiety which help individuals to react to threats. Pihkala
(2020a) has applied emotion researcher Kurth’s (2018) concept of
“practical anxiety” to describe this beneficial dimension of ecoanxiety and climate anxiety. Research is only gradually moving
forward, but forms of both constructive anxiety and paralyzing
anxiety have been found in studies. However, most scholars argue
that as a whole, eco-anxiety and climate anxiety should not
be seen fundamentally as anxiety disorders but instead as wide
phenomena which include many motivational aspects (Clayton,
2020; Hickman, 2020; Verplanken et al., 2020; Wullenkord et al.,
2021). Hogg et al. (2021) draw from the distinctions between
various forms of rumination made by Olatunji et al. (2013), and
point out that in addition to cognitive-emotional impairment,
which is targeted by Clayton and Karazsia’s (2020). Climate
Anxiety Scale, emotion-driven rumination should be studied in
relation to eco-anxiety (see also Wullenkord et al., 2021).
Feelings of ambivalence, powerlessness and helplessness seem
to be especially common features of eco-anxiety, which is logical
given that anxiety in general is characterized strongly by feelings
of uncontrollability, unpredictability, and uncertainty (Pihkala,
2020a). More intense forms of these feelings are discussed below
in the section about Strong anxiety, depression, and despair
(4.5). In a Finnish national survey about climate emotions,
powerlessness was recognized by 39% of the respondents and
feeling paralyzed by 12% (Hyry, 2019). In a recent global study,
56% of the young respondents felt powerlessness and 51%
helplessness in relation to climate change (Hickman et al., 2021).
People have also been noted to sometimes feel strong climaterelated fear and worry, bordering on terror, which is often called
dread and at times horror. Albrecht (2019) has coined the term
“global dread” to describe this, and Clark (2020) contrasts a more
universal “Anthropocene Horror” with ecological grief related to
more specific losses. In more empirical research, Haltinner et al.
(2021) studied worry and dread among climate change skeptics,
linking worries with more specific objects and dread with “bigger,
more existential threats” (p. 3).
Worry includes both cognitive elements, such as repetitive
and at least partly uncontrollable chains of thoughts and images,
and an affective dimension of feeling troubled (Verplanken et al.,
2020; Stewart, 2021). One facet of this affective dimension of
worry, which could be explored more, is its link with caring.
For example, when people say that they feel worried about
their children’s futures because of the climate crisis, this does
not mean just repetitive cognitive phenomena, but feelings of
care and concern. This links worry, anxiety, and fear with love
and compassion, which are discussed below in section Love,
Empathy, Caring, Compassion, but also with sadness.
ecopsychologists have argued that there is a kind of primary,
cultural-level trauma, which has resulted from the breaking and
damaging of the connection between humans and the morethan-human world (Glendinning, 1994/2007). This has been
linked with climate trauma by Woodbury (2019), who has argued
that a new kind of understanding about levels of trauma are
needed to capture the magnitude of “climate trauma.”
There are many ways in which one can feel lonely or even
isolated because of the climate crisis. One may feel isolated
if one’s community does not recognize the validity of difficult
climate feelings or climate action (Kretz, 2017). Theoretically it
is also possible that one may feel lonely and isolated if one is
skeptical about climate matters and others in one’s community
are not. Strong experiences of trauma are known to be sometimes
linked with self-isolating behaviors, as are stronger depression
and stronger anxiety. For discussion about the dynamics of
self-isolation in relation to climate trauma, see White (2015).
When analyzing varieties of climate trauma in depth, it
becomes evident that many emotions can be connected with its
forms, such as grief, anxiety, guilt, and anger. There is strong
dimension of sadness in trauma and loneliness, for example, and
threat-related emotions are very commonly present.
Fear, Worry, Anxiety, Powerlessness, Dread
These emotions, which are related to threat and risk perceptions,
exist in numerous different intensities and modalities. There is
also a vast body of scholarly literature about various definitions
related to them. In the following, some instances of them are
briefly discussed. They are linked with feelings of insecurity, and
the climate crisis seems to often threaten people’s sense of safety,
which is a central psychological need.
People feel climate fear: bodily—or, bodymindly—reactions
engendered by the climate crisis. As the philosopher McQueen
(2021) points out, fear has fundamentally a life-protecting
function, but naturally fear can easily go astray by becoming
too intense or by arising in situations where it is not needed.
The same dynamics apply to anxiety, and it should be noted
that sources often use these two concepts in intermingled ways
(Pihkala, 2020a). There evidently are strong forms of eco-fear
and climate fear: people sometimes feel panic, terror, or hysteria
in relation to ecological threats, but most forms of eco-fear
seem to be less intense. For example, in a Finnish national
survey, 31% of Finns recognized some kind of climate fear in
themselves, 25% self-recognized anxiety, and <10% recognized
strong climate anxiety symptoms (Hyry, 2019). In a recent global
survey about young people and climate change, 67% of the ten
thousand respondents reported feeling climate fear and 62%
climate anxiety of some kind (Hickman et al., 2021).
People feel climate worry in various ways, and there seems
to be a need for further discussion about making distinctions
between worry-related phenomena (see Ojala et al., 2021).
Stewart (2021), who has developed a scale for climate change
worry, defines it as “primarily verbal-linguistic thoughts about
the changes that may occur in the climate system and the possible
effects of these changes.” Often types of worry are differentiated
into constructive and unconstructive or pathological worry: in
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Sadness, Grief, Yearning, Solastalgia
himself has started to use the term in the general sense of
ecological grief (Albrecht, 2019), but many scholars differentiate
between various forms of ecological grief and use solastalgia to
refer to place-related ecological sadness and longing. There is
a burgeoning research interest in solastalgia, with many case
studies from various parts of the world (for a review, see
Galway et al., 2019). The “solastalgic distress” explored by Weik
von Mossner (2018) comes close to what certain others have
called eco-anxiety.
Yearning and longing are common parts in grief and sadness,
and scholars have observed these in relation to climate grief and
sadness, too. Longing can be directed both toward the past and
the future: one may long for something that has gone, but also
for something to come in the future. This provides certain links
to hoping.
Recently, Comtesse et al. (2021) discussed the state of
scholarship on climate grief and called for instruments to
measure its forms. This is an understandable plea, but the
issue is very complex, because there are so many different
forms of climate sadness. In the health system, there have been
certain tendencies to sometimes pathologize normal forms of
sadness, as has been argued forcefully by Horwitz and Wakefield
(2007). Measures and scales related to ecological grief and more
specifically climate grief should take into account the fact that
during the following years, there will be many kinds of ecological
sadness and grief, and only some of these will sometimes fulfill
diagnostic criteria. There are also milder forms of feeling “blue”
or “low.”
There are many shades in sadness and grief, ranging from mild
sadness to bereavement-like, forceful grief. There are also many
ways in which related concepts are used: many refer to sadness as
a basic emotion and to grief as a more intense and often longer
feeling or mood. Sadness is one of the most studied dimensions
of eco-emotions and climate feelings, which seems to reflect the
prominence of grief among the affective responses to ecological
crises. The character of climatic changes is such that there are (1)
numerous kinds of losses involved, (2) many of the losses are very
strong, and (3) there has been a lack of psychosocial resources
to encounter these kind of losses. As a result, there has been
manifold forms of climate loss and sadness, often in complicated
forms (Tschakert et al., 2019). The most common general terms
for these are “ecological grief ” (Cunsolo Willox and Landman,
2017) and “climate grief ” (Cunsolo Willox and Ellis, 2018), but
“climate sadness” has also been explored (Pihkala, 2020d).
While there is a significant body of research about ecological
grief, there is less scholarship yet about models which would
show its various forms. Cunsolo Willox and Ellis (2018) discuss
insightfully many aspects of climate grief, applying terminology
from grief theories, such as disenfranchised grief, ambiguous loss,
and frozen grief. In her influential article, Randall (2009) applied
grief researcher William Worden’s thinking into ecological grief.
Acute losses, transitional losses, anticipatory losses and chosen
losses all engender slightly different kinds of grief and sadness.
Lertzman (2015) has championed the term environmental
melancholia, which refers to a difficult form of mourning where
the causes are not necessarily detected by the persons themselves.
All this being said, there is still need for further discussion and
model-building about various forms and intensities of ecological
grief and its crucial part, climate grief (similarly Comtesse et al.
(2021)).
In those surveys where climate sadness or grief has been
included, it has received rather high self-recognition scores
among climate emotions. In a Finnish national survey, some kind
of climate sadness was self-recognized by 34% of Finns (Hyry,
2019). The Finnish language does not differentiate between
sadness and grief, but “alakuloisuus,” which means a kind of
melancholy or low mood, was inquired about in the survey,
and 23% self-reported that. In an American survey (Smith and
Leiserowitz, 2014), feeling “sad” was reported by 43%. In a
Greenlandic survey (Minor et al., 2019), 7% felt sad very strongly,
12% moderately, and 27% not very strongly. Caillaud et al. (2019)
observed significant levels of collective climate sadness both in
France and Germany, but more in the former. In a global study
in 2021, 67% of the young respondents recognized feeling sad
because of climate change and 42% grief. 39% reported “feeling
depressed” (Hickman et al., 2021); this is presumably more like an
emotion or mood than a strong state of depression, and further
research is warranted to explore varieties of climate depression
(see section Strong Anxiety, Depression, Despair below).
A special word for certain forms of ecological grief is
solastalgia, a term developed by environmental philosopher
Albrecht to describe the felt sense of disturbance and sadness
because of negatively perceived environmental changes. Albrecht
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Strong Anxiety, Depression, Despair
Like shock and trauma, strong anxiety, and strong depression are
mental states which can include many kinds of emotions. The
wording strong anxiety is used here to differentiate between (1)
practical anxiety and (2) stronger anxiety states and stronger trait
anxiety. Research on the dynamics of eco-anxiety is currently
ongoing, but the observations so far show that in general, ecoanxiety does not correlate strongly with general trait anxiety. In
other words, persons who normally are not prone to anxiety still
may experience eco-anxiety (Pihkala, 2020a; Verplanken et al.,
2020; Hogg et al., 2021; Wullenkord et al., 2021; cf. Clayton and
Karazsia, 2020).
Emotions that can manifest in connection to anxiety include
feeling disturbed, feeling distressed, feeling helpless, and feeling
hyperactive. In stronger anxiety, these feelings are more intense
and longer-lasting. Strong anxiety can manifest as a feeling that
the person just can’t take it: a fearful feeling that one may
collapse. As seen above in Table 1, feelings of overwhelm have
often been reported in relation to the climate crisis. Some forms
of eco-anxiety are captured by the preliminary definition of ecoanxiety in an APA report, “chronic fear of environmental doom”
(Clayton et al., 2017). A person may feel a strong urge to do
something to reduce anxiety (see also section Motivation, Urge
to Act, Determination), which may manifest as various degrees
of compulsive behavior (Pihkala, 2020a).
There are many kinds of depression, and some of them are
normal parts of grief processes. A separation between depressive
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Fredericks, 2021). While “eco-shame” and climate shame have
received less attention than eco-guilt and climate guilt, it seems
evident that shame is much present in the affective landscapes
of the ecological crisis (Orange, 2017; Aaltola, 2021). Landmann
(2020) includes the category of “Self-condemning Emotions
(Guilt, Shame, Embarrassment)” as one important dimension in
ecological affect. This points once again to the importance of
these emotions, although the collective forms of guilt and shame
cause certain challenges to the term “self-condemning,” as will be
discussed below.
The array of climate guilt and shame can seemingly range
from temporary feelings of embarrassment to long-term feelings
of complicated guilt and shame (Orange, 2017). Guilt and shame
can both be related also to group identities, and it has been noted
that people may feel climate guilt and climate shame because they
associate themselves with groups that they deem inadequate in
relation to climate matters. “Species shame” is ecological shame
felt simply because one belongs to a human race which one deems
to be shamefully destructive toward the more-than-human world
(Orange, 2017; Bamberg et al., 2018; Jensen, 2019; Aaltola, 2021).
In a recent global research, 50% of the young respondents
told that they feel climate guilt, and 46% told that they feel
“ashamed” because of climate change (Hickman et al., 2021).
In the Finnish national climate emotions survey of 2019, 24%
of the respondents self-recognized climate guilt and 18% selfrecognized climate shame; in the youngest segment, 15–30-yearolds, the numbers were significantly higher, 31% for climate guilt
and 26% for climate shame. In addition, 44% self-recognized
“riittämättömyyden tunne,” feeling inadequate because of the
climate crisis (Hyry, 2019). This feeling seems to be significant
form of the affective reactions to climate risk, and it is seemingly
easier to self-admit and self-recognize than guilt or shame. Even
without stronger feelings of guilt or shame, people feel to be
inadequate because the demands posed by the climate crisis are
so vast. This has been implicitly discussed by researchers such as
Verlie (2019), but the emotion term of “feeling inadequate” may
help to direct more attention to it: “on a daily basis, I feel like I’m
not doing enough, I’m not achieving enough to create this huge
impact I’m waiting for. Though I feel like I’m not doing enough,
I don’t know what else I can do” (Verlie, 2019, p. 4).
Furthermore, various forms of regret in relation to ecological
issues have also been observed (Böhm, 2003; Jovarauskaite and
Böhm, 2020). In the Finnish national survey, 16% self-recognized
feelings of climate regret, and 26% of the youngest segment, the
15–30-year-olds (Hyry, 2019).
feelings and longer-time depression is in order. In stronger
depression, there may be intense feelings of worthlessness, which
link this with guilt and shame, and powerful despair. Closely
related to depression is despair, another term which is used in
various connotations. As a feeling, despair may manifest also
as a strong motivation to act, and this is a different matter
from despair as a mood, which is commonly part of depression.
There are sporadic writings about “climate depression” and “ecodepression” (for a review, see Pihkala, 2020a), but these feelings
and mental states should be studied more. In a recent global
study, 44% of the young respondents told of feeling climate
despair (Hickman et al., 2021).
The ecological crisis and the climate crisis can also result in a
difficulty to feel. A seeming state of non-feeling, numbness, and
apathy has been noticed by several scholars (see Table 1; and e.g.,
Verlie et al. (2020)). Lertzman (2015) offers a wide discussion of
“environmental melancholia” and argues, echoing Joanna Macy
(e.g., Macy and Brown, 2014), that there is “a myth of apathy:”
behind that which seems apathy are many complex and often
suppressed or repressed emotions. Several other scholars have
also applied psychologist Lifton’s theory of “psychic numbing”
to explain this phenomenon (Nicholsen, 2002; Norgaard, 2011;
Lifton, 2017): people may numb themselves if they feel that they
are not able to withstand difficult emotions. This can be made
worse by feelings of powerlessness. Furthermore, an existence
of “climate anhedonia” in various intensities—an inability to
enjoy—seems evident, but needs further study.
As seen above in Table 1, feelings of hopelessness have been
recognized in several studies in relation to the climate crisis and
the global ecological crisis. Therapists have observed feelings of
meaninglessness in some of their clients who feel climate anxiety,
testifying to the manifestations of eco-anxiety as deep existential
anxiety (Lewis et al., 2020; Budziszewska and Jonsson, 2021).
Anxiety of meaninglessness, a classical category in theories of
existential anxiety (Yalom, 1980), seems to be a difficult and
quite common form of eco-anxiety (Pihkala, 2020a). It is possible
that sometimes people feel resignation: they have lost any faith
in their opportunities to make an influence, and some people
feel resignation in relation to the shortcomings of the whole
contemporary civilization.
Closely related to eco-depression and climate depression—
sometimes called climate blues in their milder forms—are
feelings of low self-esteem and inadequacy (cf. Marczak et al.,
2021). These are intertwined with an affective dimension of guilt
and shame.
Guilt, Shame, Feeling Inadequate, Regret
Feeling Betrayed, Disillusion, Disgust
In classic formulations, guilt is linked with doing something
wrong and shame with being wrong in some way. In other words,
guilt is more other-oriented, since it is related to what one has
done or left undone to others, and shame is more self-oriented,
since it regards the individual’s felt sense of oneself. However,
both of these complex emotions include intricate interplay of
social factors and self-evaluations (e.g., Lewis, 2016b).
It has been noted in numerous studies that people have
multifaceted feelings of guilt and responsibility in relation to
environmental issues (for wide discussions, see Jensen, 2019;
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Many emotions are put together here, but they have elementary
connections with each other. These emotions are closely related
to moral outrage and to anger in general, which will be
discussed in the next subsection. A key unifying theme is a
feeling of injustice, which causes resentment (for resentment
and the climate crisis, see Andrews and Hoggett, 2019). Feelings
of disappointment, which were discussed above in relation
to amazement (section: Amazement, Surprise, Disappointment,
Confusion), are much present here.
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2020; Keller, 2021), and the dynamics related to disgust should be
studied in relation to this.
Analysis of studies reveals that these kind of emotions are
very common and quite central in relation to the climate
crisis and to many other ecological crises. Compared to their
central role, there is relatively little explicit discussion of them.
Several scholars have observed that some young people feel
betrayed because of climate inaction by the decision-makers
and partly by the earlier generations (Hickman, 2020; Jones
and Davison, 2021). Psychoanalyst and author Weintrobe (2021)
speaks strongly on the behalf of those who have been deceived by
a “climate bubble,” a culture where climate responsibility has been
avoided. In a recent global study, 58% of the young respondents
felt that the governments of the world had betrayed them in
relation to climate action (Hickman et al., 2021).
Those who suffer from place-related environmental damage—
see the discussion above about grief and solastalgia—often
display feelings of being betrayed (e.g., Askland and Bunn, 2018,
19). On one hand, these are feelings of solastalgia, but they are
often also climate emotions, because climate change is strongly
affecting the local changes (Galway et al., 2019, 6). Feelings of
disillusion have also been reported (e.g., Marczak et al., 2021).
Disgust is a feeling that seems to have been relatively little
researched in relation to environmental issues. For example,
Hiser and Lynch (2021) decided to replace Plutchik’s emotional
category of disgust with shame (p. 8). Exceptions include Böhm’s
(2003) influential study about various ecological issues and
emotional responses to them, O’Dell-Chaib’s (2019) dissertation
about ecological affect, and the book about ecocriticism by
Houser (2014), where a complete chapter is dedicated to
discussing disgust. Houser mainly analyzes the novel Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace in relation the dynamics connected
to environmental disgust in that book, but she also provides
wide-reaching observations about the emotion. Disgust strongly
captures attention and is clearly present for example in bodily
reactions to pollution. In many cases, disgust may provoke
pro-environmental behavior: for example, people disgusted by
plastic pollution in water and in animal bodies can be sparked
into activities and policy support related to reduction of plastic
waste. However, the dynamics are complex, as they usually
are in relation to difficult emotions: disgust may also drive
people away from anything that reminds them of the issue.
Scholars have argued that in order for disgust to support longterm change, “pedagogy of disgust” (Lupton, 2015) is needed in
communication (Henderson and Green, 2020).
In surveys, many people have been found to feel “disgusted”
by climate change (Smith and Leiserowitz, 2014; Minor et al.,
2019). It is somewhat difficult to evaluate the general valence
of this climate disgust, because it can be estimated that some
people are morally disgusted by the injustices of climate change
and some people feel aversion toward the whole subject (see
the discussion below in section Hostility, Contempt, Feeling
Discontent, Aversion).
The topic of how disgust may feature in interpersonal relations
in connection with ecological issues needs further research (see,
however, Twine, 2010). Nussbaum (2018) has shown how disgust
has been used in politics, often combined with misogyny. In
environmental politics, it has been noted that the climate activist
Greta Thunberg has been a target of serious misogyny (Jung et al.,
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Anger, Rage, Frustration
Anger and rage are very closely connected with the emotions
discussed in the previous subsection. In addition to just causes,
anger can also arise from misconceptions of injustices. People
may feel rage and fury because of narcissistic reasons, and as
a psychological or psychosocial defense against felt threats to
self and/or group identity. There does not exist an universally
accepted exact terminology about various forms of anger, but
rage relates to a stronger form of anger, and fury usually refers
to an even more intense form of rage. Mild forms of anger
include irritation, annoyance, and touchiness (see Lomas, 2019).
Frustration is on one hand part of anger and on the other hand
closely related to anxiety, since the situation of not being able to
reach a desired goal produces frustration and often also anxiety
(for eco-anxiety and frustration, see Pihkala, 2020a).
During the last year, “eco-anger” has received a first focused
wave of research interest, but studies related to it are still very
few (Kleres and Wettergren, 2017; du Bray et al., 2019; Stanley
et al., 2021). This is another major omission in research about
climate emotions, because analysis of surveys and interview
studies shows that people often have feelings of climate anger.
In the Finnish national climate feelings survey, 44% recognized
climate frustration, 31% climate anger, 28% climate irritation,
and 16% climate rage (Hyry, 2019). Based on the free answers that
respondents could give, many people were furious about the lack
of ambition in climate politics, and several were furious because
of a position of climate denial: they were angry that there was any
public discussion about climate matters. In an American survey,
44% reported climate anger (Smith and Leiserowitz, 2014). In a
recent international study, 57% of the young respondents told of
feeling angry about climate change (Hickman et al., 2021).
As Antadze (2020) suggests, there seems to be a strong need
for further differentiation between various forms of climate anger
and rage, and more research about these. Antadze insightfully
explores the philosophical foundations for moral outrage because
of the climate crisis.
Hostility, Contempt, Feeling Discontent,
Aversion
This array of emotions refers to a felt sense of hostility toward
topics related to climate change. These affective dimensions often
include anger, feelings of aversion, and even disgust. These kind
of emotions have been found among climate deniers (Wang et al.,
2018; Haltinner et al., 2021). More broadly, people have feelings
of contempt toward others who do not share one’s opinions
on climate politics. This kind of “climate hostility” or climate
contempt can manifest both toward climate skeptics and toward
active proponents of climate politics. An unpublished research
manuscript (Webster et al., 2021) studies partisan schadenfreude
in relation to climate change in the US, and there are also some
other observations of “climate schadenfreude” (e.g., Cox et al.,
2018).
This array of emotions can also include feeling bored because
of climate change (e.g., Hyry, 2019). In the Finnish national
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survey, 32% self-recognized feelings of skepticism and doubt
toward climate matters, 27% said they felt “fed up” or bored
about climate matters, 22% felt aversion (“vastenmielisyys” in
Finnish, a mild form of disgust), and 15% self-recognized feeling
rejection or denial (Hyry, 2019). In a recent research article on
sociology, Neckel and Hasenfratz (2021) argued convincingly
that it is very important to pay attention to various emotions of
hostility when discussing climate emotions, so that researchers
do not give an impression that only those people who feel for
example climate grief are emotional about the subject. The range
of climate emotions includes also hostile emotions.
Marczak et al. (2021) found “an urge” that people who
experience eco-anxiety feel for pro-environmental behavior.
Lertzman (2019) uses the term “aspiration,” and psychodynamic
climate scholars discuss the Kleinian concept of reparation in
relation to this (Weintrobe, 2013). Because of the ubiquity of
feelings of guilt and shame, many people not only feel general
motivation to do something good related to environmental
issues, but they feel an urge to make up in some way for the felt
earlier transgressions by themselves or by the groups that they
associate themselves with. In the Finnish climate feelings survey,
31% self-reported feelings of desire for reparation in climate
matters (Hyry, 2019). Other closely related emotions are regret
and remorse (see also section Guilt, Shame, Feeling Inadequate,
Regret above).
Determination is a feeling intimately related to the
aforementioned ones. Determination can be conceptualized
as a strong form of motivation and willingness, pointing to
an enduring character of willing. The virtues or attributes of
courage, endurance, and strength of will are indeed close to
determination. Verplanken et al. (2020, 7) found feelings of
determination in their research about eco-anxiety. Hamilton
(2020) observed that emotion-focused methodologies enabled
many participants to develop strong feelings of determination
for pro-environmental behavior. Either implicitly or by using
various different terms, this dimension of feeling motivation,
urge to act and determination is discussed in many studies, but
there are currently no widely used keywords to capture this
(for examples, see Verlie, 2019; Verlie et al., 2020; Hiser and
Lynch, 2021). Some scholars use the formulation “being moved”
to describe a related emotion (Landmann, 2020; Stollberg and
Jonas, 2021).
Envy, Jealousy, Admiration
Envy is a rather fundamental emotion in interpersonal relations,
but one that has received very limited attention in relation to
environmental issues (see, however, the reflections about jealousy
in McGrath et al., 2018). Due to lack of research, it is here only
pointed out that this emotion seems to be, based on theory and
analytical observations, an important one also in climate matters.
People may feel climate envy because they desire something
that others have in relation to the climate crisis, such as better
possibilities to adapt, more resources, or more social acceptance
(cf. the discussions about closely related emotional dimensions,
without using the term envy, in Weintrobe, 2021; Verlie, 2022).
Various scholars use, once again, different concepts for related
emotions. Some prefer envy and others discuss also jealousy.
Lomas (2016) uses the concepts of vicious envy and emulative
envy to describe two major forms of envy: one that is ethically
problematic and one that includes much adaptive potential. In
vicious envy, a person wants something that the other has, no
matter the cost or the potential damage to the target of the
envy. But envy can also have an emulative, admiration-based side,
which sparks constructive action toward some valued goal. This
links with Landmann’s (2020) discussion about admiration as an
environmentally relevant emotion.
It seems clear that both kinds of envy exist in relation
to environmental and climate matters. There is vicious envy,
combined with hostility, toward something valuable that others
have in relation to the ecological crisis. But there is also emulative
envy and admiration, which spark development of self and one’s
behavior: think of a neighbor who sees solar panels on the other
neighbor’s roof and wants to be no less clever. In Lomas’ scheme,
emulative envy is closely tied with a desire for self-development,
following the examples of admired others. In this broad sense,
emulative envy and aspiration become joined with motivation,
which is a crucial thing related to environmental behavior.
Pleasure, Joy, Pride
This group of emotions refers to pleasure and “good feelings”
that pro-environmental behavior or removal of environmental
threats can engender. Another emotion connected with these is
relief, which clearly exists in relation to environmental issues, but
is little discussed in literature, except in relation to the theme
of human well-being in natural environments. “Feeling content”
is another aspect of this group of feelings, as is happiness (see
the discussion about the possibilities of flourishing in the climate
crisis by Doherty, 2018). Overall, there is a certain lack of research
about these positive emotions and climate crisis.
Landmann (2020) categorizes “Hedonistic Emotions (Joy,
Pleasure, Amusement)” as one important part of eco-emotions.
Two other categories in her scheme also apply here: especially
“Self-praising emotions (pride)” and partly “Other-praising
emotions (Elevation, Admiration, Awe, Being Moved, Gratitude,
Love).” Again, the categorizations of self- and other-orientation
seem complex here, given that for example pride can also be
collective and admiration can also be directed toward oneself.
Feelings of gratitude might perhaps deserve a section of their
own, because they can be directed also toward ecosystems and
more-than-human creatures (Macy and Brown, 2014; Hamilton,
2020). Love is discussed below in connection with empathy
and caring.
Motivation, Urge to Act, Determination
This group of emotions is related to a felt desire to do something
good. There are linguistic difficulties in coining a general term
in English for these emotions: benevolence is related, but
it does not include the action tendency. “Feeling motivated”
is one important aspect, and there is indeed much research
literature in environmental psychology about motivation for proenvironmental behavior (e.g., Martiskainen et al., 2020). Another
aspect is feeling interest toward climate matters, which has been
a prominent climate emotion in some surveys (e.g., Hyry, 2019).
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People can feel joy, pleasure, and happiness when they
participate in pro-environmental activities, such as climate
activism (e.g., Pickard et al., 2020). They can also feel various
amounts of pride (Bamberg et al., 2018). There is growing
scholarship on eco-pride and debates about the relative practical
benefits of it and eco-guilt. Some scholars argue that eco-pride is
more motivating than eco-guilt (Bissing-Olson et al., 2016), while
others point out that in certain situations guilt also has its positive
possibilities (Jensen, 2019; Adams et al., 2020; Fredericks, 2021).
However, it seems that people often feel complex combinations
of emotions: for example, it is common to feel both guilt and
pleasure in relation to one’s environmental behavior and attitudes
(e.g., Randall, 2005; Lertzman, 2015).
feelings of overwhelm in environmental matters, in addition to
the commonly felt negative ones (see section Strong Anxiety,
Depression, Despair above).
Feelings of belonging, togetherness, and connection can be
felt between humans and they are common in activism (e.g.,
Pipher, 2013; Pickard et al., 2020). These emotions can also be
felt with the more-than-human world. Many ecopsychologists
argue that such feelings of affiliation are a fundamental basis
for caring about climate matters and other environmental issues
(e.g., Stoknes, 2015).
Many different emotion words could be used to describe
various connotations of the affects that togetherness can generate.
These can include feeling elevation and awe (Landmann, 2020).
Hope, Optimism, Empowerment
Love, Empathy, Caring, Compassion
A certain emotional position is characterized by optimism and
empowerment. However, philosophers have argued that it would
be important to keep these two separate, because there can be
empowerment also without strong optimism (Eagleton, 2015).
This issue is closely related to the debates about various forms
of “hope” and evaluations of them in the context of the ecological
crisis (e.g., Ojala, 2017; Pihkala, 2018). The concept of hope is
used in various connotations, and there is a strong need to inquire
further about the actual meanings of “hope” for various people
and scholars. For some people, hope equates wishful thinking,
while for others, hope refers to “radical hope” or “gritty hope,”
which is not tied with optimism—at least not as strongly.
As was seen in the Results, numerous studies about climate
emotions have inquired about climate “hope,” but there are
less studies which have used careful definitions of hope and
optimism. Because of that, there is uncertainty about how many
people feel optimism and how many feel radical hope or gritty
hope. Ojala’s studies about “constructive hope” and “hope based
in denial” in relation to climate change have been more precise
(for an overview, see Ojala, 2017).
Some studies have charted climate-related empowerment and
some have included excitement or enthusiasm. In the Finnish
climate feelings survey, 20% of respondents self-recognized
climate enthusiasm, and only 13% climate empowerment. Thirtysix percentage said to feel climate hope (Hyry, 2019). Among
more closely defined groups, such as climate activists, there
seems to be both stronger enthusiasm and stronger despair
(Hoggett and Randall, 2018; Nairn, 2019; Pickard et al., 2020).
Martiskainen et al. (2020) found that although many climate
activists felt “disempowered,” 23%, many also felt “hopeful,” 35%.
In their study of students, Hiser and Lynch (2021) noticed many
feelings of being “inspired” and some of being determined and
motivated. In a recent global study, 31% of the young respondents
recognized feeling climate optimism (Hickman et al., 2021).
Various emotions of caring and warmth are grouped here
together. These are closely connected with affiliation and
togetherness, discussed above. People feel caring strongly toward
their in-group and their valued connections, but it is possible
to cultivate compassion and empathy to extend also to outgroups and indeed the whole more-than-human world. This
kind of love and kindness is the aim and foundation of many
ecophilosophies and ecopsychologies (e.g., Macy and Brown,
2014). Hamilton (2020, 159) noticed feelings of love and
connection in the participants of emotion-related workshops
around environmentalism, such as the ones based on the work of
Joanna Macy. People may also feel sympathy (e.g., Jovarauskaite
and Böhm, 2020).
Climate matters are a somewhat abstract target of caring and
love, but because climate matters are intertwined with everyday
lives, “climate compassion” can be practiced by caring for others
and places affected by the climate crisis. Indeed, it has been
argued that caring is the foundation of numerous other climate
emotions, such as climate grief (Cunsolo Willox and Landman,
2017), climate guilt (Jensen, 2019), climate anger (Antadze,
2020), and climate anxiety (Hickman, 2020). Because people care
for ecological well-being, they are saddened by losses related to it,
they feel guilt if they think that they participate in the damaging,
and they feel anger because of the systemic problems which cause
ecocide. Eco-anxiety may arise from a feeling that something
needs to be done, based on caring, and the experience that it
is difficult to choose the right emphases or to get enough done
(Pihkala, 2020a).
STRENGTHS, LIMITATIONS AND NEEDS
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
This study inquired which climate emotions feature prominently
in existing research. Based on both general emotion research
and interdisciplinary research on eco-emotions, this study
also explored which climate emotions would seem to deserve
more attention, even though they have not yet been much
studied in relation to the climate crisis. The study provided an
initial taxonomy of the prominent and potentially prominent
climate emotions and discussed these emotions in relation to
interdisciplinary environmental research. It has been emphasized
Belonging, Togetherness, Connection
Feelings of togetherness are closely linked with empowerment,
hope, pleasure, and joy. In their study about environmental
activists, Landmann and Rohmann (2020) coin the feeling
of “being moved by protest:” feeling “positively overwhelmed
by the idea that together they can make a difference.” It
is a noteworthy observation that there can also be positive
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the existing sources focus on people in industrialized countries
and there is some emphasis on certain groups of people, such
as environmentally-minded citizens. In the future, there is a
need to further extend the empirical studies to many different
groups of people. There are already some national-level surveys
of climate emotions and some international surveys, but these
depend on self-recognition of emotions, and need the support
of various interview studies and field observations. The certain
bias in the sources is somewhat balanced by the existing work
among some indigenous peoples, but postcolonial perspectives
clearly need more attention. It can be presumed that some of
the emotions that are explored here in more detail than in
much previous research, such as feeling betrayed and envy,
may feature more prominently among people who suffer from
intersectional injustices. There is also a need for studies about
climate emotions in different languages: here, only English and
Finnish were used.
This study identify gaps in the literature. The initial taxonomy
that was developed can already now inform research about
pro-environmental behavior. It can help develop therapeutic
interventions and foster personal insight by bringing attention
to the wide range of climate emotions. It may also contribute
to thinking about public health policies in relation to climate
change for example by pointing out that there are various forms
of climate sadness and climate grief, and not all of these require
medical attention. The article has increased our knowledge about
climate emotions, which makes it possible to apply its results
in behavior or influence programs, even though the relationship
between emotions and pro-environmental behavior seems to be
complex and partly context-dependent. The great urgency of
the climate crisis strongly highlights the need for more climate
research, including research about this preliminary taxonomy of
climate emotions.
that this was a preliminary study: the semi-systematic and
narrative reviews in this study provide material for more
systematic reviews to be done in the future.
This study had many strengths. For the first time, it provided
an initial taxonomy of climate emotions, building on pioneering
research on the topic (for an overview, see Hamilton, 2020).
It brought together general emotion research and eco-emotion
research, even while much work remains to be done in the
integration of these research fields. It applied the pioneering
taxonomies of eco-emotions, especially Landmann’s (2020) work,
into the topic of climate emotions, and it extended this taxonomy
on the basis of wide literature reviews and interdisciplinary
discussion. For example, this was the first time, up to the
author’s knowledge, that envy/jealousy was explicitly discussed
as a climate emotion. The moral dimension of many climate
emotions was now explored further, including such emotions
as disappointment, disgust, moral outrage, and desire to act.
The array of emotions related to the climate crisis gained
much new nuance and for example surprise-related climate
emotions received fresh attention. While the focus was on climate
emotions, many discussions in this article may help to gain
insights also in relation to eco-emotions in general. With this
initial taxonomy, the design of future studies about climate
emotions will be made easier, even if researcher decide to use
other approaches in emotion theory than the broad one used in
this study.
This study also had several limitations and challenges. Some
of these arose from the complexities of general emotion research.
There are many different uses of concepts and many different
understandings of affective phenomena. The term emotion was
used broadly in this study, referring to both bodily reactions
and conscious feelings—and complex combinations of these, and
future research should explore in more nuance the character
of various related affective phenomena. It seems evident that
there are, more strictly defined, many kinds of affects, emotions,
feelings, and moods related to the climate emotions discussed in
this article. Both the theoretical aspects of these emotions and the
lived experiences of them need further scholarly attention, and
the new kinds of climate emotions perceived in this article merit
special attention.
Interdisciplinary was both a strength and a limitation. On one
hand, it provided much new information, but on the other hand,
it made a full systematic review rather impossible. It is hoped
that this interdisciplinary study, consisting of semi-structural
and narrative reviews, would motivate further co-operation
between various disciplines. The importance of doing more
systematic reviews with meta-analyses in the future has been
mentioned several times in this article. This preliminary effort
was done by a single scholar, and in the future, double coding of
emotions would be beneficial. There are naturally many different
possibilities of naming and categorizing the climate emotions
discussed here. However, the greatly varied nature of relevant
sources will continue to bring challenges to future research.
It is important to note that this research does not claim that
the studied climate emotions are universal. The profound array
of various factors which shape people’s experiences of emotion
and their ways of naming emotions were mentioned in the article.
These issues are also relevant in relation to the sources. Many of
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DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The original contributions presented in the study are included
in the article/supplementary materials, further inquiries can be
directed to the corresponding author.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and
has approved it for publication.
FUNDING
This research was funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, a
personal grant which was granted in February 2019. Open access
funding provided by University of Helsinki.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author expresses gratitude for several scholars who
commented on various parts of this manuscript: Dr. Thomas
Doherty, Dr. Blanche Verlie, and Dr. Essi Aarnio-Linnanvuori.
Thanks also to reviewers for insightful feedback about how to
improve the article.
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