Keeping cool in the face of eco-anxiety with Britt Wray

The Decision Corner

In this episode of the podcast, Brooke chats with Britt Wray - author of Generation Dread and a Human and Planetary Health Fellow at Stanford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Britt talks about her work around eco-anxiety, the reasons and extent to which different people feel it, and the tools people can deploy to harness it and achieve positive, climate-friendly outcomes.

Some of the topics discussed include:

• The drivers of eco-anxiety, media hysteria, and the evolutionary experience of an existential threat.
• Why do some communities experience higher levels of eco-anxiety than others?
• The role of time perception and present bias in eco-anxiety, and why it can be compared to Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
• Why climate change is a unique ever-evolving challenge for us to contend with psychologically.
• Tools to help us acknowledge and accept eco-anxiety as being real and valid, and move beyond a state of anxiety-induced paralysis.