A Finnish researcher has designed a visual tool to get us talking in depth about the emotional impact of the climate crisis
Every day we’re fed a slew of headlines warning of the scale of the climate crisis. Yet little is written on how it feels to witness these existential threats – whether on the news or in our communities – and how we might begin to process it all emotionally.
The Climate Mental Health Network, a US-based resource hub, hopes to kickstart those conversations through the Climate Emotions Wheel. The tool consists of four colour-coded quadrants – representing anger, positivity, sadness and fear – each of which has its own subcategories of more specific emotions such as outrage, panic, empowerment and inspiration.
The wheel, which also has a text-free emoji version, was created in collaboration with Dr Panu Pihkala, an adjunct professor of environmental theology at the University of Helsinki, based on his research, which, for the last decade, has focused on our emotional response to the climate crisis.
“There’s a lot of research on how useful it is to be able to name your emotions, even roughly,” explains Pihkala, pointing to the “long history” of using emotion wheels in social psychology, therapy and counselling. “It helps people to react constructively to that emotion. ‘OK, I feel fear. What should I do with that feeling?’”
Each emotion on the wheel is accompanied by a key question to help users respond to how they’re feeling. For ‘empowerment’ users are asked: “When and where have I felt empowered in climate action and how can I recapture that feeling?”
But not all the prompts steer people towards pro-environmental activities – for ‘worry’, users are asked: “What level of worry is constructive? When am I slipping into excessive rumination?” and for ‘loss’: “How could I pay respect to my feelings of loss?” We can’t just ‘act’ all the time, says Pihkala, “or we’ll burn out, as unfortunately has happened to many environmental activists. We have to take care of ourselves.”
Dr Panu Pihkala has spent a decade researching people’s emotional responses to the climate crisis. Image: Uzi Varon
Only one quadrant of the wheel is given to positive emotions. Was that a conscious decision, to reflect the desperate situation we’re facing? Pihkala notes that in most climate research generally, positive emotions are just not identified as often as other emotions: “Climate change is a big problem and threat, so it’s very natural that emotions that are often called negative, are evoked.”
He says it’s important to be critical of the idea that only positive emotions are desirable, as negative emotions can serve life in profound ways.“When you lose something, it doesn’t feel good, but sadness can help you cope with change and allow you to feel gratitude for the memories or for what remains,” he says. “If you know we’re losing bird species, for example, it’s possible that when you hear birdsong you feel both sadness and gratitude to be there at that moment, hearing a bird sing.”
Reinventing the wheel: the Climate Emotions Wheel
The US-based writing instructor and environmental activist Shankar Narayan, who uses the Climate Emotions Wheel in his teaching with adults, reframed a class on writing about ‘climate grief’ to ‘climate emotions’, in order to reflect the “whole rainbow” of emotions that we feel. He says the wheel has proved useful for his teaching because it helps legitimise a whole range of feelings around climate change, beyond just grief, such as empathy, hope and empowerment.
It becomes a space to hold multiple, seemingly contradictory truths, says Narayan, helping us to explore emotions more closely.
It’s possible that when you hear birdsong you feel both sadness and gratitude to be there at that moment, hearing a bird sing
As the Climate Mental Health Network is based in the US, the wheel has mostly been used in North America so far. Among those to put it to work already are teachers, parents and therapists who cover all age groups from six upwards. It has now been made available in 30 languages, so Pihkala hopes it will spread far and wide.
He acknowledges it’s possible that Trump’s open assault on climate science might limit the usage of the tool in the US: the conservative Project 2025 aims to scrub out climate change from public education and the federal government completely.
But in an era when 75% of young people around the world say they’re frightened for the future due to the climate crisis, according to a study in The Lancet, Pihkala says he hopes that looking at the wheel will help young people, and indeed all of us, to identify their emotions and work with them with more nuance.
It’s important that work continues to happen at grassroots level, he says, despite – or because of – what’s happening in the White House. Personally he finds himself continually buoyed by the work of people who are trying to help.
“I’m always strengthened by meeting some of the myriad people who work on climate matters, in so many fields, and in so many places.” And how does he handle his own emotions? Mixing up how he spends his time has proved useful, particularly since the pandemic, he says: “Playing musical instruments, going outside, spending time with children.”
Connecting with the more-than-human world is another crucial tool for him, Pihkala says. “Every morning, in the midst of my research, I go for a walk to the nearby forest, practising a kind of tai chi in the woods and opening my senses to the various kinds of life there. It maintains my energy levels, and lets all the different emotions flow.
Main illustration (on the blue background) by Pâté
