Grief and Hope in a Changing Climate
In October of 2017, I had a panic attack as ash and smoke rained down on California’s Bay Area. Days before, winds at the rate of a car speeding down the freeway, picked up and catapulted embers from brush fires into Sonoma County. For many Californians and their families, panic turned to grief, part of a pattern that continues year after year across the world, as the intensity, frequency, and damage of extreme climate events increases. Millennials and Gen Z-ers are channeling these feelings into the fight of their lives: an urgent, radical, and necessary shift in how we approach the climate crisis and how we relate to our ecological world. In this vein, part of my work at the Well Being Trust (WBT), an impact philanthropy that focuses on advancing the nation’s mental, social, and spiritual health, is to amplify messages and policies at the intersection of climate change, social justice, and mental health.