Climate change and compassion fatigue

I’m a climate scientist, and I don’t worry about climate change very much. I think about it every day, but I don’t let it in. To me climate change is a fascinating math problem, a symphony unfolding both slowly and quickly before our very eyes. The consequences of this math problem, for myself and my family and our future, I keep locked in a tiny box in my brain. The box rarely gets opened.

The latest IPCC special report tells the world what I and all of my colleagues have known for years: we’re seriously running out of time. In order to keep climate change in the category of “expensive inconvenience” rather than “civilisation destroyer”, we’re going to have to decarbonise the global economy in less time than many of the people reading this have been alive. But given the priorities of most of the world’s governments, it seems uncomfortably plausible that we’ll be facing the sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland I’ve only ever seen in movies. Will the rich and privileged countries be able to buy their way out of this crisis? Maybe. But maybe not.

I know all this. I’ve known it for years and it’s why I chose the career that I did. It’s the backdrop to my every working day. But I can’t seem to imagine my future intersecting with this future. I can’t picture myself or my family as part of the movie, only as part of the audience. It feels deeply intangible, like my own death.

Instead I surround myself with the comforting minutia of academic life. I worry about small things, like how I’m going to fix the latest problem with my model, and slightly larger things, like what I’m going to do when my contract runs out and whether I will ever get a permanent job. But mostly I just really enjoy studying the disaster. An ice sheet which is falling apart is far more interesting than a stable ice sheet, and I feel privileged to have access to such a good math problem. So I work until my brain feels like it might turn into liquid and slide out of my ears, then I cycle home in the mist and eat Cornish pasties on the couch with my husband while watching the BBC. In so many ways, I love this life. And I don’t worry about climate change, I don’t open that box, for months at a time.

“Compassion fatigue” is a term used to describe healthcare professionals who become desensitised to tragedy and suffering, and lose the ability to empathise with their patients. It begins as a coping strategy, because fully absorbing the emotional impact of such harrowing work would eventually make it impossible to get up in the morning. I think I have compassion fatigue with climate change. The more I study it, the less I actually think about it. The scarier it gets, the less I seem to care.

And maybe this is okay. Maybe compartmentalisation is the healthiest response for those of us close to the issue. Accept the problem, fully let it in, and decide what you’re going to do to help. Then lock up that box in your brain and get on with your piece of the fight. Find joy in this wherever you can. Open up the box once in a while, to remind yourself of your motivation. But for the most part ignore the big picture and keep yourself healthy and happy so that you can keep going. Even if this, in and of itself, is a form of denial.

This article was written by Kate, a B.Sc. student and aspiring climatologist from the Canadian prairies. She started writing the blog ClimateSight when she was sixteen years old.