You're Probably Suffering From ‘Eco-Anxiety’
What Will Be Lost is a series of reported stories and essays exploring the ways climate change is affecting our relationship to one another, to our sense of place, and to ourselves.
It’s an unusually smog-free morning in Los Angeles, and Luke Massman-Johnson is standing on his roof with a squeegee, cleaning his solar panels to maximize their productivity.
A former creative designer, Massman-Johnson, 52, spent decades working with big clients like Disney and Mattel. When his son and daughter were in elementary school, he and a handful of other parents formed a “green committee” to help teach the kids about environmentalism. Over the next 15 years, it grew from a passion into an obsession: The more Massman-Johnson learned more about climate change, the more alarmed he became.
“I had a sort of slow panic that just kept building, and I saw no end in sight,” he said. “I just decided at some point that I couldn’t work on anything that wasn’t climate-focused, that wasn’t making a positive impact.”
He began declining jobs that required him to fly or drive. Then he turned down offers for major design projects because he felt corporate consumption was counter to his desperate desire to reduce his carbon footprint. In 2015, he left creative design and co-founded a gas-free landscaping company that enabled him to work from home and take advantage of his solar panels and composting system.
“I destroyed my career over this,” he said. “I gave up skiing and all sports I have to travel for. My friends and family don’t love me talking about it. So how is it that I’m doing the thing that feels right?”
Massman-Johnson isn’t alone. Far from it. Support groups are popping up across the globe to help people cope with feelings of despair, stress and anxiety around a changing planet. The problem has become so widespread that there’s even a name for it now: solastalgia, or, more commonly, “eco-anxiety.”
The climate is changing in...
