The Seven Stages of Climate Grief

Also applies to collapse.

Photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash

I thought this was a clever way to frame a person’s travel through an understanding of the climate crisis, and then I found that there are a few different lists of what those seven stages of grief are. Some people even say there are only five. Heretics!

Here is the list I found most often:

1. Shock and Denial - Disbelief. The reality is hard to grasp.

2. Pain and Guilt - As we understand the situation more, pain and guilt may creep in.

3. Bargaining - We try to reverse the loss or find ways to “make a deal” that we can accept.

4. Depression - Yeah, bargaining doesn’t work. Sadness, despair, hopelessness settle in.

5. The Upward Turn - Shift towards acceptance

6. Reconstruction and Working Through - Working through the loss, adjust to life in new reality.

7. Acceptance and Hope - Coming to terms with reality and moving forward.

The below list is the one I was operating with from memory. This is the list I’m going to use.

1. Shock - Yep. Sounds right. We’ve all been there when we fully understand the reality we are confronted with.

2. Denial - This seems like a separate thing from shock. And it comes after shock. So I separated them.

3. Anger - Someone is responsible - and it isn’t me! Those scientists skip this step! What? In the words of Joe Strummer: “Let fury have the hour, anger can be power, you know that you can use it. I’m keeping anger.

4. Bargaining - Any devils out there we can make a deal with?

5. Depression - Gotta hit rock bottom.

6. Testing - This replaces the upward turn and reconstruction. What they heck are those anyway. They sound like they were tested in a focus group.

7. Acceptance - Get out of here hope. Hope is not a strategy. Have all the hope you want, but it does not belong here in my opinion. Hope is the ironically named of the character that gets killed off first in an post-apocalyptic movie. Doing the work that needs to be done to rebuild the world sounds like what comes after acceptance. You can have hope on your list if you like, no judgment. But it isn’t on mine.

We are near the end of the seven stages of climate grief.

First comes shock. This manifests itself with an initial paralysis upon fully understanding what climate is and it makes it so terrifying. Then comes denial, trying to convince ourselves that it can’t be that bad. Just look around. Things aren’t that bad. Yesterday was okay, and today is okay. I’m sure tomorrow will be fine. Next comes anger, as denial melts away and we become frustrated that not enough is being done. Then bargaining, where we look in vain for a simple way out; green tech will save us right? Offsets will make everything okay, right? When we realized there was no easy solution, we got to depression, finally realizing the inevitable. Testing comes next, where we seek out realistic solutions. Then in the end we get to acceptance, and finally finding a way forward with the world we are left.

People are at all different points along this continuum. I’m firmly in acceptance myself, but I recognize and remember all of those other steps. I know things are bad, and there is no sense crying anymore. We must roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Anger can be power.

It’s ok to get angry about the way things are. Angry people get things done. A study that came out in September of 2023 showed that anger was the emotion that led to the most action around climate change. The study, which was conducted in Norway, found that climate activism was seven times more likely due to anger than due to hope. However, the researchers that conducted the study found that people on average had relatively mild feelings about climate change. The lead author of the study commented on this stating, “The problem isn’t that people feel too scared about climate change. The problem, in Norway at least, seems to be that they’re not scared enough.”

We need to turn that anger and fear into action, so that is what I am going to ask you to do. Use that anger and fear as motivation to educate yourself, to seek out others who are in the struggle with you, to engage with the powerful in our society to get things to change. Once you understand that climate change is coming for you, and you work through the seven stages of climate grief, you can get started.

It will not be easy. The powers that be will keep telling you that there is nothing to really be worried about, or that things are under control. They will attempt to minimize the problem for as long as they can so that profits and power can flow to them for as long as possible.

I’ve written before about French philosopher Guy Debord and his theory of recuperation – where those in power co-opt revolutionary ideas to the point where they can be neutered and easily folded into the mainstream. I’m not sure if that can work with degrowth. How do you take the concept of degrowth and use it to get people to consume more?

Degrowth is a topic that we will be seeing more about and hearing more about in the coming years. Younger generations will see it as a tool to combat the impending doom of climate change and the destruction of our natural world, and older generations and those in power will at first be dismissive of it and then attack it and then try to “recuperate” it. I’ll be interested to see how that works for them. I don’t think it will. I just don’t see how you work degrowth into a car commercial, or how you sell financial products with “degrowth”.

In the end it is really up to us to ensure that our economy addresses both the supply issues with climate change (green energy) and the demand side of things (degrowth). It is up to us to make sure that human outcomes are put before economic outcomes. That is not the way things are now. It will be eventually, either by disaster or design.

Let’s pick design.

Turning your anger into action … or inaction as a consumer … is the first step. But there is still more to do.

And when you find someone on one of the 7 steps that you have already navigated, help them.

To get you in the mood. Listen to this.