The second step needed to take climate action is to control the methods taken to respond to the global crisis; this includes the anxious reactions and the factors needed to build the willingness to change environmentally unsustainable habits.  As climate change becomes a more recognized topic, some consequences remain undeniable: being aware of such colossal threats may be translated into anxiety, which itself depends on socio-demographic and geographical characteristics. However, many aspects of climate change anxiety are not yet understood. Nowadays, the general psychological and emotional responses to climate change are progressively gaining recognition. They come in several forms: 1) solastalgia, which results from the degradation of the person’s usual environment, 2) eco-anxiety, which describes the state of fear from environmental doom, and 3) ecological grief: which relates to intense experiences of ecological losses. However, until now, there is a lack of knowledge of climate change anxiety, including therapies, and treatments. To assess the phenomenon, the authors used qualitative methodologies to reach conclusions on the topic based on available subjective experiences, with no specific geographical criteria of the studied population. 

The authors divided the responses to climate change into the following categories: 

1. Distancing and avoidance: They neglect the seriousness of the issue, and people who work in the field frequently consciously decide to distance themselves from thinking about the consequences of climate change. “For activists, this was a key step in resolving feelings of crisis brought on by the knowledge of climate change.”
2. Acting: They take climate action, and the Swedish youth is a notable example of that. (e.g., Greta Thunberg)
3. Fostering support: A few actively sought support from activists who consciously held positive ideas about the future and identified the importance of a network of practice and culture of self-care.
4. Adapting: A few adapted to climate change, which was seen in groups of farmers in the USA, who chose adaptation over mitigation. Farmers reported they are used to extreme weather events and already managed the possible environmental risks. The same scenario is described by Ghanaians who quoted: “Let us face it, people have already seen extreme weather events in the past. Awfully bad ones. Therefore, they keep finding innovative ways of dealing with the weather changes. That’s why we are aware but don’t generally worry about environmental changes.”
5. Optimism: A few others had hopeful responses, for example, young people in Sweden focus on solutions and trust in science, policy, and environmental groups, amongst others.

Not only does the socio-economic factor influences these responses, but also the geographical factor:

We must be aware that islanders tend to be more vulnerable to climate change. This is due to the rising sea levels, for example in Tuvalu, those who are in the low social class tend to have greater distress attributed to climate change compared to the higher social classes. Despite all these learning, the concept of climate change anxiety is not understood enough yet and needs to be studied further for clarity and standardization. Based on this article, other factors that also need to be further studied are philosophical, moralistic, religious, and other diverse perspectives of climate change. 

Moving onto the consequences of exposure to the digital media’s climate information we will review of Acquadro Maran, and Begotti’s questionnaire studies completed with young university students from Italy.

It is incredibly popular for many to derive climate change information from digital media which can cause diverse emotional responses. The authors of the following paper we are reviewing ask “How is the media related to climate change anxiety?” 

They go about answering the question above by surveying 312 Italian university students through an anonymous questionnaire. Even more interestingly, the results revealed that there is a connection between attention to climate change and climate anxiety, the same positive connection is also present with individual and collective self-efficacy. In the context of pro-environmental behavior changes, a moderate level of anxiety could engender feelings of virtue, encouraging people to rethink actions with negative ecological impacts. 

Acquadro Maran and Begotti revealed that these reactions may result from direct experiences of extreme natural events, and indirectly from exposure to climate change news. They are expecting that there are two correlations: 1) a positive connection between anxiety and climate change news and 2) a negative connection between climate change news and pro-environmental habits’ beliefs. We can find the content of the questionnaire used to tackle this question using the research of Ogunbode et al. (2019) The first finding is that young people are more at risk than adults for the mental health effects of climate anxiety because they are experiencing vulnerability to climate change’s consequences. Conceptually, women are more at risk of experiencing social media addiction than men, as found in the answers related to the source of information of the surveyed target audience: young adults collect information from social media networks. Based on the above, the exposure of this group of people to climate change information shows that there is a negative connection between their source of information and the negative mental health effects of climate change anxiety.

Furthermore, an investigation of such topic is needed, to reveal the connection between those who experience severe and direct climate change consequences and their level of both self-efficacy and the mitigation of anxiety. The research was not considering the socio-demographic, financial, academic, and environmental factors. 

Acquadro Maran, D., & Begotti, T. (2021). Media Exposure to Climate Change, Anxiety, and Efficacy Beliefs in a Sample of Italian University Students. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18,17. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18179358

Ogunbode, C. A., Doran, R., Hanss, D., Moe, H., Ojala, M., & Salmela-Aro, K. (2019). Investigating Associations between Media Exposure, Climate Anxiety and Mental Health (MECAMH).

Ryghaug, M., Holtan Sørensen, K., & Næss, R. (2011). Making sense of global warming: Norwegians appropriating knowledge of anthropogenic climate change. Public Understanding of Science, 20(6), 778–795. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662510362657

Soutar, C., & Wand, A. P. F. (2022). Understanding the Spectrum of Anxiety Responses to Climate Change: A Systematic Review of the Qualitative Literature. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(2). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19020990