At work, Megan Kennedy-Woodward sits across from her clients and assures them they are not crazy.
Kennedy-Woodward, the co-founder of Climate Psychologists, said she regularly works with her clients through climate anxiety and the isolation that comes with it.
“They feel like they’re the only ones that know what’s happening, you know,” she said. “No one else seems to be upset by it.”
Canadians are still relearning how to engage socially in post-pandemic society, and adjust to the many lasting impacts of COVID-19.
Kennedy-Woodward said the transition has exacerbated climate anxiety, especially as winters get warmer and summers become less predictable.
She said content pertaining to big, existential threats, like COVID-19 and climate change, are not the best to be consumed online.
“The human brain isn’t really equipped to process them, especially with the way that we consume information through technology,” Kennedy-Woodward said.
Weather experts agree. Peter Kimbell, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada, said recording and sharing climate-related content online has attracted more concern around the issue.
“There are more people out there with cameras and social media posting [storms] online when they do occur, so we’re more aware of them when that happens,” Kimbell said.
Even more, an increase in clickbait, misinformation, and fake news in recent years has worsened the problem, according to Kennedy-Woodward.
“There have been a huge number of disinformation campaigns to keep us feeling like either the responsibility falls on the individual, or that it’s too big to solve,” Kennedy-Woodward said. “And that can feel isolating.”
She said that an aspect of the community has been missing since the introduction of COVID-19, and Canadians are still feeling the impacts.
“With the isolation of COVID, people have these heightened experiences, and that might have meant that they felt more fear, anxiety, anger and even apathy because they felt really disempowered,” Kennedy-Woodward said. “And so coming out of that, people are still adjusting and working on that sort of community basis, and that cohesive social pattern.”
Kent Moore, a physics professor and Vice-Principal Research at the University of Toronto Mississauga, blames this lack of community on the delocalization of Canadian society.
As Canadians continue to work from home and communicate more heavily online, he said a spotlight has been cast on climate change.
“People are more aware of the weather now, perhaps because of anxiety around the climate,” Moore said. “Our perceptions, I think, sometimes collapse down and aren’t really representative.”
Kimbell has similar thoughts. He said Canadians’ perception of weather severity may be driven by anxiety, rather than actual, concrete events.
“We hear a lot about how the weather is going to get worse, and then something happens, and you are under the perception that it is getting worse,” he said.
Kennedy-Woodward said the ongoing isolation and lack of community post-pandemic has fuelled the fire.
She highlighted the importance of regaining social support, and said community action relieves climate anxiety more effectively than climate action itself.
“When people feel connected with others, they are a lot less likely to feel that isolation,” Kennedy-Woodward said. “And in turn, they feel more motivated and inspired by others to take action.”
Kennedy-Woodward said now, more than ever, Canadians should actively seek out positive solutions and stories where communities are taking climate action.
She said Canadians can use the lasting impacts of COVID-19 to their advantage and find like-minded communities online.
“That’s a really supportive way of moving away from that isolation and finding your climate action interests,” Kennedy-Woodward said. “Find a group that’s interested in the same thing you are so that you can support each other.”