Looking at Emotions to Understand Responses to Environmental Challenges

Emotions are keys to understanding the response to environmental problems. We discuss three important roles. First, emotions like worry, anxiety, pride and hope can motivate pro-environmental behaviour. Second, emotions are also consequences; the emotional impacts of environmental degradation, such as climate anxiety, can affect mental health, and recognising these impacts is necessary to encourage individual and societal resilience. Finally, emotion also has a communicative function and is part of shared experience. The ability to describe and elicit shared emotions in response to environmental problems allows those problems to become part of social discourse, which is necessary for addressing them. Research in all these areas can help guide an adaptive response to environmental challenges.