As climate impacts intensify and environmental news becomes harder to process, many people are experiencing powerful—and often unspoken—emotional responses. In this reflective and practical piece, Linda Aspey (CPA) and Trang Dang (CIWM) explore the idea of climate emotions, why they are a rational response to a hyper-complex crisis, and how Climate Café Listening Circles can help individuals and communities stay grounded, connected, and resilient in a fast-changing world.
Lack of rain, hosepipe bans, flash flooding, typhoons, tropical storms, fly-tipping, the collapse of negotiations for a global Plastic Treaty in Geneva, and yet another COP with little progress—this is the backdrop against which we now live. It’s a relentless cascade of environmental and political failure. Natural disasters are growing in frequency, scale, and violence. Pollution flows across borders. More people in more places feel direct impacts each year.
Climate change is everywhere and nowhere. The moment we try to point at it—this flood, that fire, those mountains of discarded items—it slips through our fingers and reveals itself to be larger, more diffuse, more complex than the single example we offer. A landfill overflowing with cheaply made garments is an environmental crisis, yes, but only a fragment of the picture.
Our media landscape bombards us with conflicting information: misinformation, disinformation, and, at times, overwhelming volumes of information that feel impossible to process.
Philosopher Timothy Morton calls climate change a “hyperobject”—an entity so vast, so distributed in time and space, that we can only ever perceive a piece of it. Hyperobjects phase in and out of our awareness because we are not built to grasp them whole. We are always looking at the crisis through a narrow keyhole.
Climate change is also sticky. Once we begin to grasp its scale, it refuses to leave us alone. The weather forecast becomes a warning. A dry winter becomes a sign. Even a pleasant summer breeze carries the whisper of a warming world. The anxiety sticks, often in ways we can’t fully explain. The more we wish to shake it off—to return to a simpler time—the more insistent it becomes.
At the same time, our media landscape bombards us with conflicting information: misinformation, disinformation, and, at times, overwhelming volumes of information that feel impossible to process. It’s no wonder the climate crisis feels overwhelming, even paralysing. When we step back, we see why. The climate crisis is massive, interconnected, and inseparable from every part of human life. Our usual mental frameworks—designed for local, linear problems—are inadequate to the task.
And yet, climate emotions can help us understand ourselves and each other. They tell us something important about our relationship with the world.
What Are Climate Emotions?
“Climate emotions” refer to the complex feelings we experience as – individually and collectively – we become aware of the climate and ecological crisis. These include grief, anger, fear, anxiety, despair, uncertainty, guilt, love, hope, and even numbness. These feelings are not irrational. They are a normal, healthy response to what we are facing.
We grieve because we recognise what has been lost: ancient forests, glaciers, species, homes, and cultural heritage. We feel fear because extreme weather events are multiplying. We feel anxiety because the future is uncertain. Beneath these emotions lies something essential: care. These reactions signal our awareness of our deep interconnectedness with the nonhuman world. They reveal our recognition that human life is woven into a larger web of beings and systems.
When faced with the reality of plastic pollution, of outsized landfills, and more, many of us feel a deep concern for the valuable resources slipping through our fingers. It stirs anxiety and fear about where this path leads if we keep taking from the Earth out of convenience, habit, or old ways of thinking, while forgetting that we are also highly adaptable—the very agility that has driven both our success and destruction.
It can trigger echoes of much deeper, primitive emotions, formed in our infancy when the basis of our emotional life was being formed. When we had no words for terror or shame, just powerful feelings that were hard to feel, so we learned to bury them away.
When people feel overwhelmed, they may retreat into paralysis, denial, avoidance, or a false belief that nothing they do matters.
Uncertainty, too, is a climate emotion. Despite the anxiety it brings, uncertainty can be constructive. It signals possibility—the not-yet-written future. It marks the spaces in which change can still occur. In uncertainty there is hope, because what is uncertain can still be redirected.
But uncertainty can also tip into hopelessness. When people feel overwhelmed, they may retreat into paralysis, denial, avoidance, or a false belief that nothing they do matters. These emotions can lead to choices that reinforce unsustainable systems: prioritising convenience over longevity, cheapness over durability, linearity over circularity. They can trap individuals and societies in patterns of extraction and waste. They can avoid talking about the subject because they fear they will be seen as ignorant, or negative, or incompetent. And these feelings can prevent people from calling on their leaders to take action.
“Waste” itself is a profoundly human concept. In her book The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard former Executive Director of Greenpeace USA, reminds us that “there is no away.” Every item we discard continues its journey somewhere, affecting someone or something. In nature, there is no waste. Everything is a resource moving through cycles of transformation. Birds scatter seeds in their droppings, which enrich the soil; from this soil, plants grow and bear fruit, feeding the birds once more. Nothing is lost.
Facing the climate crisis is emotionally difficult, but there is joy in contributing to a shared world. There is meaning in noticing what remains—what is alive, what is beautiful, what is worth protecting. Author Jeff VanderMeer encourages us to pause the narrative of unchecked growth and instead pay attention to our surroundings. This attention reawakens our relationship with the nonhuman other.
Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer teaches that seeing the Earth as a community of beings rather than a collection of objects transforms how we act. If we regard a maple tree as a person, we hesitate before cutting it down. Emotions drive our thinking, and our thinking shapes our actions.
For many, the question becomes: how do we stay present to the crisis without becoming overwhelmed?
One answer is community. One tool is connection. This is where Climate Café Listening Circles come in.
Climate Café Listening Circles: A Resilience Toolkit
Climate Cafés exist in many forms around the world. Some host guest speakers. Some organise repair cafés, swap shops, practical workshops, community projects, or activist groups. Others gather for films, conversation, tea, and cake. But Climate Café Listening Circles (CCLCs), developed by Rebecca Nestor and Gillian Broad of the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA), serve a specific purpose.
A CCLC is an informal, confidential, lightly facilitated space—online or in person—where people can talk openly about their feelings regarding the climate and ecological crisis. There are no presentations, no advice, no pressure to take action. The emphasis is on listening. Tea and cake – for in person cafes – emphasises the welcoming nature of the event.
These circles make room for the whole emotional spectrum: fear, grief, anger, shame, ambivalence, numbness, hope, tenderness, and love. Many of these emotions are difficult to express in everyday life. Society often discourages them, favouring some form of denial or “toxic positivity” instead. Some people feel they must pretend the crisis isn’t happening in order to function. Others feel trapped in despair.
Sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel uses the term “socially constructed silence” to describe the ways groups avoid confronting painful truths. This silence is powerful and widespread. It helps people cope, but it also prevents honest discussion about our relationship with the living world—and about the systems causing harm. In many wealthier nations, harmful systems feel inevitable, making it difficult to envision alternatives.
As climate impacts become more visible, many individuals are emerging from what psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe calls the “Climate Bubble”—the psychic space in which we imagine we can live as if nothing is wrong.
For some, attending a Climate Café Listening Circle is the first time they openly admit that something feels profoundly out of place. Others arrive exhausted from activism, or isolated in their awareness. Some are frustrated that people around them don’t seem to care. Breaking silence often brings relief. It allows people to connect with their values and experience what many describe as a “culture of care.”
What Do Participants Bring?
People bring a wide range of concerns. Many express feelings of inadequacy—of not doing enough; the enormity of the crisis makes individual effort feel insignificant. People question the value of recycling when they know their plastic waste may be shipped overseas. They express anger at companies whose greenwashing masks resistance to real change. They talk about fears of societal breakdown, war, or a future of increasing instability.
Some participants confess they have “given up,” believing that the scale of the problem makes their actions meaningless. But when these feelings are spoken aloud—and heard without judgment—they often begin to shift. Being listened to dissolves some of the helplessness.
Others wrestle with cognitive dissonance: flying despite climate concerns, working for companies whose products harm the environment, selling things they now question, or making choices that go against their values because life’s practicalities demand it. Climate Cafés offer a rare space where these contradictions can be acknowledged honestly.
People also describe the pain of being surrounded by apathy. They ask: “How can my partner, my parents, my colleagues not care? Can’t they see what’s happening?” Many have felt unable to express this frustration for fear of conflict. Finding others who “get it” can be transformative.
How Do Climate Café Listening Circles Help?
Speaking feelings aloud brings clarity. It helps people move from confusion or paralysis into deeper understanding. This is not resignation; it is a step toward integration—toward living with awareness rather than fear.
Climate Cafés help break isolation. They reconnect people with courage, imagination, and a sense of agency. Participants often express fears they have never said aloud. Many feel and express an immediate sense of relief. Hearing others voice similar dilemmas cultivates compassion—for oneself and for the people who seem uninterested or indifferent. This compassion can open the door to better conversations at home and at work.
Although CCLCs are not therapy, they are therapeutic. They provide a space where emotions can be held safely. This helps people stay awake to the crisis without being overwhelmed. The ritual—arriving, speaking, listening—creates containment and consolation, normalising climate distress and removing the shame around it.
There is no expectation that participants take action, and yet many leave with renewed motivation: to live more aligned with their values, to join community initiatives, to care for others more actively, or to deepen their involvement in climate-related projects. The circles are not perfect—nor are they meant to be. But they often allow for more honesty than conversations outside them.
As one participant said at the close of a session:
“It was good to be real today, even if just for this time.”
Who Can Attend—and Where to Find a Circle
CPA Climate Café Listening Circles are open to everyone. Increasingly, employers, educational institutions, healthcare providers, and community groups are offering them in-house.
To find a CPA Climate Café Listening Circle, visit the Climate Psychology Alliance’s Training and Events page (climatepsychologyalliance.org).