If you are having sleepless nights mired in anxiety about the overwhelming existential crisis of ClimateChange;

having panic attacks over being utterly helpless in the face of global inaction and unawareness,

feeling you are alone in the realisation that the world is literally burning its future in front of your eyes,
and no one except you seem to be seeing it for what it is.

You are not alone.


We, the common people, are now merely sharing the burden with thousands of depressed and anxious climate scientists whose studies & warnings were categorically ignored for decades. In fact, the condition is so widespread now, we even have a term for it– eco-anxiety. And this anxiety is fully justified, you are not being alarmist or paranoid. There, you now realise you are not alone in this, right?

[To the old blog readers who don’t follow me on Instagram, if you are wondering why this odd post on climate change suddenly, here’s why. I’ve been doing weekly posts on Instagram on climate change for few months now, decoding the science behind climate change and talking about why it is an issue we cannot ignore anymore. This post here is an extensions of that series.]

But how do we cope with this gargantuan grief? If you are even a slightly aware and empathetic person, unfortunately I’ve to say there is no escape from it, only managing it, as @carapiranha beautifully put it few days ago.

Earlier this year, I was deep in the pits of despair over this very same eco-anxiety. I couldn’t function normally, it felt like constantly carrying a heavy burden on my heart fully knowing no amount of crying or screaming would help me get over the sadness or paralysis induced by fear of future. The last nail in the coffin was when I had a conversation with old friends who seemed totally unbothered by climate change. But somehow miraculously, here I am “preaching” to you today on how to handle ecological grief.

So what changed and what helped? Few things, let me break it down for you. It may read like hollow words from a self-help guru to begin with, but stay till the end, I have insights for you, I promise.

Does this mean I’m not sad or angry anymore over climate change? Not at all. But I now know how to manage it a bit better and not let the fear paralyse me. I now know to recognise little rays of hope and not let the overwhelming nature of climate crisis make me an outright cynic. I now know to have faith in the process and in the resilience of humans overall.

Are you now wondering what are these little rays of hope I speak of? For that, we need to learn to zoom out and see the larger picture much beyond instant headlines and standalone events.

If you look at the world events today, everything is all round depressing. The ice caps are still melting, the floods are not relenting, hurricanes are assaulting non stop, coral reefs are dying, fishes are disappearing, forests are still burning. But the big difference now is that people are acknowledging these things. They aren’t faraway events that do not affect our lives, we all are seeing them affect us in our daily lives. The only thing left to do is to connect the dots for those who do not see how climate change is behind all these exacerbations. Now think of five years ago where we were on the topic of climate change and think of all the strides we’ve made in advancing the conversation today. Individual events matter, they stack up and can lead to huge progress. Seemingly insignificant ideas propagate and can manifest in surprising ways. Greta’s school strike is now a global movement and AOC’s Green New Deal has a life of its own today and if any version of it brings clean energy to the US, the world will be so much better for it.

So you see, while we grieve for the world and seethe in anger over the terrible future we’re hurtling towards, it is also extremely important to acknowledge the strides we’ve taken in the right direction. Because if hope is lost, we’ve lost the fight already. And today I want to tell you that there is still hope. If not for the next generation, we owe it to the scientists who have carried this knowledge/burden for decades, but were ignored, yet they somehow wake up in the morning and still fight to date to save humanity.

And so we must keep faith too, that humanity will come together and triumph.