Your friendly neighborhood CIG (Certified Interpretive Guide) here to tell you that this phenomenon is well-documented, and even has a name: ecophobia.
If I recall my certification class correctly, the term “ecophobia” was coined for this problem by David Sobel. (And if he didn’t coin it, he certainly made very good use of it.) In this context, ecophobia is defined as “a feeling of powerlessness to prevent cataclysmic environmental change.”
The fear that comes with ecophobia is absolutely paralyzing. It is overwhelming. It has led many a promising, passionate person to throw their hands up and shout “I give up!! It’s never going to change!” It really, really sucks.
When I worked as an educator at a major US aquarium a year or so ago, I lived each day with a creeping sense of my own ecophobia. My job, of course, was to inspire hope and change in the aquarium’s guests… but in order to know where the hope was, I had to know all the nitty-gritty details, all of the ugliest and most soul-crushing facts about the environment’s destruction.
I knew way too much about how the planet was dying. I knew that, statistically, while I talked to a woman about using reusable shopping bags, a sea turtle was probably out in the ocean somewhere, about to chomp on a single-use one and choke. While I talked to a family about conserving the rainforest by choosing sustainable coffee, tea, and chocolate, acres of trees were being razed in South America. Sharks were being finned. Reefs were bleaching and dying. All of the things I was encouraging people to do weren’t even a drop in the bucket–they were the atoms in a drop. Sometimes I just wanted to scream. Sometimes, on the drive home, I did scream. More than once, I pulled over onto the side of the highway, parked my car, and screamed and cried until I was numb.
But you know what got me through? You know what gave me hope?
Most of my programming was aimed towards kids. Asking them to count a horseshoe crab’s legs and tell me if they can name any other animals with ten. Letting them touch a shark’s toothy jaw or a caiman’s skull or a sea turtle’s carapace. Encouraging them to pick up and shake and sniff things on a discovery cart. Resting a turtle shell on their back and telling them to swim their arms like a sea turtle, or asking them to give me their best dolphin impression.
Something that a lot of people take for granted is that, even to an eight year old with a smartphone and unlimited data, a lot of the world is totally new and undiscovered. They’re learning new things every day. Some of it’s exciting. Some of it’s scary. But all of it is interesting to a degree, and all of it presents an opportunity to connect them to the world around them, if presented the right way. And seeing their eyes light up, seeing the connection forming in their mind, gave me more hope than I can describe.
In interviews, articles, and his own books (I highly recommend Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education), Sobel lays forth the idea that our biggest problem is the disconnect between ourselves and the environment. Our greatest hope for the future lies in fostering those connections with the generations that will follow us. In connecting them to the natural world. In encouraging them to develop empathy and concern for its many parts. In giving them the tools and support and letting them take the helm. This article is a fantastic read, laid out very clearly and in plain language, and illustrates just how that works.
Here’s a great section from it (bolding mine):
An article in the March/April 1989 issue of Sierra relates how a group of sixth graders in Salt Lake City, Utah, became concerned when they noticed that a map of hazardous waste sites in the city included a location just three blocks from their school.
“That old barrel yard?” 11 year-old Maxine asked. “Kids climb all over those barrels.”
When classroom teacher Barbara Lewis contacted the Department of Health, she was told that “there’s nothing children can do; they’ll be in high school before they see any results.” The students were compelled to act. They contacted the EPA, the owner of the barrel yard, and the mayor. They studied literature on hazardous waste and the problems involved in cleaning it up. They attracted reporters intrigued with the children’s persistence. And, after a year and a half, they not only witnessed the removal of the 50,000 barrels and the beginnings of the EPA clean up, but they wrote legislation, lobbied legislators, and saw the passage of a Utah state law that set up a hazardous waste clean up fund.
Sixth graders. Ten and eleven year olds influenced lawmakers and got a bunch of adults to care about and clean up a section of their city. And this was in ‘89. None of those kids had smartphones or social media, but they were able to organize and change the law of the land, because they cared about their home and got enough people to care about it too. And they did it in under two years.
So to return to my original point: Ecophobia is terrifying. Ecophobia is paralyzing. Not even the people who are trained to fight against it are protected from its grip. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed and afraid.
But if you can, encourage the kids. Support the next generation.We’re not going to fix this, and neither are they. But we can start slowing it down, and they can put the brakes on harder, and so on and so on, through the generations, until maybe, one day, things start to get better.
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