BZC and Climate Change

Our relationships to our changing climate are complex. There are many folks at BZC who are thinking about, affected by, or acting on climate change through their work or in their free time. Some of us met a few weeks ago at a climate-themed Zoom meeting in January; others have undoubtedly been in conversation for years.
This short regular column will be a place to uplift these climate conversations, programs, and actions, so that members of BZC can find new ways to engage with climate change. This month, we’d like to focus on the topic of eco-grief.
Eco-grief is a psychological response to environmental degradation or climate change. Another commonly used term is climate anxiety, or “solastalgia”—a sense that your home is changing for the worse, or disappear­ing, as you live in it. These topics have been in the news lately, notably in the New York Times article “Climate Change Enters the Ther­apy Room” and the New Yorker article “Mapping Climate Grief One Pixel at a Time.”
The first step in coping with eco-grief is to speak with others—to share with them the very real sadness you are experiencing. That’s why we’d like to introduce an upcoming program (dates TBD)—possibly a class, group, or workshop—dedicated to processing and coping with eco-grief, led by BZC member Judy Smith and others. Please keep an eye out for more information!
One of the best ways to make creative use of eco-grief is by taking collective action on local climate change issues. Our next column will focus on how to get involved in the Bay Area climate advocacy landscape. We are developing a Getting Started in Climate Advocacy workshop to take place some time in the coming months.
If there is a climate topic, memory, or meditation that you would like to share or see in this column, please reach out to bmcguire442@gmail.com.