Eco-Anxiety and the Climate Professional

British Science Association · 29 May 2025 · Authored guest piece

For Mental Health Awareness Month 2025, the British Science Association invited me to write a guest piece on eco-anxiety, drawing on both my work as a climate scientist and my own experience of carrying climate work in a job that asks for both precision and patience. The full piece is on the BSA website. Below is a short summary of what I argued, and the lines I most want people to take away.

Why I wrote it

A YouGov survey commissioned by Greenpeace UK earlier in 2025 found that nearly two thirds of UK secondary school children are experiencing mental health symptoms tied to concern about the environment. BSA’s own Future Forum research has shown that the lack of climate education in schools is part of what’s driving that anxiety, rather than relieving it.

I wrote the piece for two audiences. The young people carrying that anxiety, and the climate professionals who recognise the same anxiety in themselves but are expected to perform calm under it.

Eco-anxiety is rational, not fragile

The first thing I wanted to establish is that eco-anxiety is not a sign of being too sensitive or too young. It is a reasonable response to what we know about the planet.

“Eco-anxiety isn’t new. It’s not just a youth issue. And it’s certainly not a symptom of being too sensitive. It’s a response to what we know about the planet, the state we live in, and the risks that lie ahead.”

It builds quietly, in the guilt after a long flight, the dread of another headline, the helplessness as the clock ticks. Naming it doesn’t make it disappear, but it does let you face it with clarity instead of guilt.

Passion can quietly become pressure

A lot of us came into climate work energised by what we thought was passion. Sorting recyclables as kids, watching glaciers vanish in documentaries, committing to make a difference. Over time that energy can turn heavy, and what’s actually happening underneath is burnout dressed up as dedication.

“When the fear of not doing enough overshadows the joy of doing anything at all, it’s time to pause.”

Managing eco-anxiety isn’t about shutting your passion off. It’s about not letting it consume your identity or your capacity.

The system was built to wear you down

The piece spends a section on the way individual responsibility narratives have been deliberately engineered to displace systemic accountability. BP’s “carbon footprint” campaign is the cleanest example, designed to shift the conversation from corporate emissions onto your shopping list. The numbers tell you who actually moves the needle:

• Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.
• The top 10% of earners account for 60% of global CO₂ emissions.
• The top 1% alone contribute 20% of global warming.

“It’s not your footprint that broke the planet, it’s theirs, and recognising this isn’t defeatist, it’s empowering. It means you can let go of guilt and aim your energy where it matters.”

There’s no such thing as the ideal climate warrior. Collective action is stronger than individual purity.

Climate work has a credibility tax

This is the section closest to my own day to day. Climate science gets punished for being dynamic in a way other fields don’t. All science updates with new data, but in climate a model revision gets framed as failure rather than progress. Risk drops from 50% to 40% and suddenly the narrative is “see, it was exaggerated all along.”

“You’re not just doing the work, but also bracing for the misinterpretation of that work.”

Every word has to be airtight. Every claim has to survive bad faith reading. That’s a real cost, and it isn’t talked about enough.

“Would you expect a pilot to guarantee zero turbulence? Would you fault a surgeon for revising a diagnosis with new scans? Of course not. We must extend the same grace to ourselves.”

“Uncertainty doesn’t mean failure. It means you’re being honest. And that honesty is your strength.”

What I actually do to keep going

The piece ends on the personal, because I didn’t want to write something that diagnoses without offering anything. A few of the things that keep me in this work:

I refuse to shame myself for feeling anxious. Anger, frustration, disappointment in systems, all of it is valid, and channelable. I take breaks without apologising for them. I make mindful choices within my means rather than chasing purity. I’ve stopped using Amazon. None of this fixes anything alone, but the alternative is paralysis.

And I keep returning to the numbers, because they tell a different story than the headlines do:

• Global renewable capacity is set to grow 2.7× by 2030.
• The UK eliminated coal-generated electricity in 2024.
• 80% of companies with sustainability targets are on track.
• Brazil saw a 30.6% drop in Amazon deforestation in 2024.
• Nearly 1 in 5 cars sold in 2023 was electric.
• Over 230 climate lawsuits have been filed against polluting companies.

“None of that happened by accident. It happened because people didn’t give up.”

You were never meant to do this alone

The closing argument is the simplest one. No single person can fix this. The good news is that no single person has to.

“Showing up doesn’t always mean protesting. Some days it means resting. Other days it’s emailing your MP or buying local or helping a neighbour plant something. It all counts. It all adds up.”

“Show up when you can. Rest when you must. Trust that even on days when you feel small, you are part of something vast. That’s not failure. That’s the movement.”

• 🔗 Read the full piece: britishscienceassociation.org → Tackling eco-anxiety
• 📄 Archived copy: download PDF