Is climate anxiety bad for the planet?
A second problem with climate anxiety as a term is that it is too amorphous to conjure the kinds of actions required to mitigate climate change. We feel too small to do anything about it. Climate change in general is hard for people to perceive as a risk because it is too big, too far, or too in the future, to feel in time and space. It seems uncannily designed to not be perceived as a risk. We may feel climate changes effects, such as increased heat, extreme weather events, rising sea levels and more infectious diseases like COVID, but climate change itself is imperceptible. It is thus hard to figure out what our object of worry is, and so we dont know what to do to avoid the threat. In other words, climate just doesnt make the cut as a villain in this story  it isnt like a burglar breaking into your house at night, or even your house on fire, as Greta Thunberg, the Swedish activist, asks us to imagine.