The Emotional Burdens of Oppression and Climate Change
The following are some of my take-aways from the Sustaining All Life forum at COP26 “The Emotional Burdens of Oppression and Climate Change”:
Healing the emotional burden of climate change will release us to be more effective in our climate work.
We have a chance to do something about the climate crisis. We have a better chance if we discharge some of the feelings we carry about the crisis—despair, fear, intense grief, overwhelm. Carrying these feelings can get in the way of acting to end the crisis.
The environmental crisis cannot be fully resolved without ending racism, genocide toward Indigenous peoples, classism, sexism, and other oppressions.
Global Majority and Indigenous communities and nations have so far experienced the most severe impacts of climate change, but the oppression they experience in their daily lives makes it difficult for them to fully participate in the climate movement. Therefore, ending all forms of oppression is a crucial part of stopping climate change.
Trans-Ekulu, Enugu, Nigeria
(Present Time 206, January 2022)