Emotions of the Anthropocene across Oceania
Abstract
:1. Introduction
Literature Review: Emotional Impacts of Climatic and Environmental Change
2. Methods
3. Results
3.1. Acute and Slow-Onset Weather Events: Fear, Stress, Anxiety, and Exhaustion
There is enormous stress already being felt by the higher frequency of El Niño and La Niña, inundation events, droughts etc (Participant #32, regional study, 2020)
People were stressed and scared especially for the cyclone as this is a first for everyone (Participant #9, Cook Islands, 2020)
I can remember lying in bed that night asleep and waking up to feeling of the walls moving in and then out and hearing the rain just outside our bedroom door on the floor where the roof had come off our home. I have never forgotten that... The worry that the rest of the roof was going to come off, the wind was so loud, and we were in complete darkness without power, it was scary (Participant #6, Cook Islands, 2020)
3.2. Experiencing Loss and Change: Sadness and Grief
Sadness during the Snowy Mountains fires in NSW. This area is where I spend much of my youth, so it was really sad to see it perish. I felt like I was experiencing the same hurt that the environment (trees, wildlife) was—as my memories were embedded in that location (Participant #60, Mt Barney, 2021)
Forests I’d grown up walking in were burning, including ancient old rainforests which won’t get a chance to recover… There’s a lot of grief attached to that, and a strong sense of being cut off from the future (Participant #9, Mt Barney, 2021)
When I was little, I thought of the world as kind of guaranteed—it would always be there—and having that certainty taken away, knowing that a lot of the things I love about the world won’t be there any more, knowing that the world might not be survivable for a lot of people by the time I’m a grown-up—it’s grief, and anger, and fear of how much grief is still to come (Participant #9, Mt Barney, 2021)
I would be so saddened if my children could not bring their children to these places. It would be so sad that they could not experience the brilliance of this earth, its rawness and true beauty (Participant #60, Mt Barney, 2021)
What will be our future?
what will be the future of our children?
searching for myself
seeking a refuge as the world is getting worse day and night
my day is so much pain
my day is much struggle
I cry to my Lord to help me through
my people and children
my own country
stand firm and stay strong until the end of time
climate change is so strong.
3.3. Perceived Lack of Agency or Control over Futures: Anticipatory Anxiety, Anger, Frustration, Helplessness and Sadness
I’m always anxious about what the world will look like when I get older and what it will look like for my children when I have them (Participant #4, Mt Barney, 2021)
I am worried about climate change, and the tropical cyclones, these are more regular now and more intense (Participant #1, Cook Islands, 2020)
I’ve felt strongly anxious about climate change for about four years. I think it just started with there being too much news about the pace of pollution and climate change, which made me feel like it was simultaneously urgent to do something and impossible to know what to do or to do something big enough to have an effect. It was a very panicked feeling (Participant #9, Mt Barney, 2021)
[I have] a lot of anxiety because it feels like we can’t do anything to stop it, anger because people that can stop it aren’t doing anything (Participant #14, Mt Barney, 2021)
I’m angry that I can’t do enough and that people in higher positions of power aren’t doing enough (Participant #5, Mt Barney, 2021)
[I feel] a lot of anxiety because it feels like we can’t do anything to stop it [climate change] (Participant #14, Mt Barney, 2021)
...we have passed the point of no return for damage to our environment and feeling that anything we do to try and change it is never going to be enough (Participant #40, Mt Barney, 2021)
Sadness and hopelessness in my ability to stop this. I can’t control this (Participant #35, Mt Barney, 2021)
I am just one person, though. These actions [pro-environmental behaviours] do not take away my sadness when I see what humans are doing to the planet all over the world (Participant #13, Mt Barney 2021)
3.4. Sense of Injustice: Worry, Helplessness, Anger, and Empowerment
I feel worried and helpless, because we know that the natural [sic] disasters are a direct impact from the big country nations with their factory pollution, mining, cutting down trees in the rainforest, strip mining of trees for commercial farming. All this is a direct impact being seen and felt all over our small Pacific Island countries (Participant #10, Cook Islands, 2020)
You think you have decades before your home fall beneath tides
we have years
we have months before you sacrifice us again
before you watch from your tv screens and computer screens
to see if we will still be breathing
while you do nothing
You want to know what I see when I look out there? I see a graveyard. I see a sinking vaka [boat] and all our ancestors are the passengers. We didn’t do this to ourselves! While people like you were out there living, we were moving our homes inland, we were building walls, heaving water out of the sinking graves of our dead, collecting what remains, and for what? What did you do to stop it?
There are those who want to talk about climate change, yet don’t want to talk about how those who are affected the most, can’t prioritise it in the first place because prioritising it would mean being forced to pull the layers back and also talk about the poverty, the racism, the injustice, the privilege, the hush money, the hit lists that climate change is operating from, the rounds it makes on earth starting with the most vulnerable. Everyone is affected by climate change, yet some are affected first, but no one cares until it’s affecting them.
The media turns a blind eye to that in a state of anger fear and panic
people act
we do not flee
we act
we will not flee
we will act
because with each rising wave is our rising resilience
and sense of justice and urgency for home, for us I swear I will fight for this grandma
I will fight for my family
I would fight for my country survival
for bigger countries mock us, after they have violated the earth’s virginity with their carbon
filled aphrodisiac, digging and pumping off from our mother’s womb relentlessly
constantly mocking us
My sister
I offer you these rocks
as a reminder
that our lives matter more than their power
that life in all form demands
the same respect we all give to money
that these issues will affect each and every one of us
none of us is immune
and that each and every one of us has to decide
if we
will
rise
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
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Clissold, R.; McNamara, K.E.; Westoby, R. Emotions of the Anthropocene across Oceania. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19, 6757. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116757
Clissold R, McNamara KE, Westoby R. Emotions of the Anthropocene across Oceania. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2022; 19(11):6757. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116757
Chicago/Turabian StyleClissold, Rachel, Karen E. McNamara, and Ross Westoby. 2022. "Emotions of the Anthropocene across Oceania" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19, no. 11: 6757. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116757
APA StyleClissold, R., McNamara, K. E., & Westoby, R. (2022). Emotions of the Anthropocene across Oceania. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(11), 6757. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116757