Understanding climate grief
Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of uncertainty when it comes to the environment. With droughts, floods, fires, heat waves and other extremes, a lack of control can be completely paralyzing.
Maud Powell, a professor of practice in the Small Farms Extension program at Oregon State University, is an advocate for farmers’ and food producers’ mental health. She’s traveled the West Coast to educate ag professionals about climate grief for almost two decades. Powell joined the 2025 New Hampshire Ag Professionals Day to bring her training to the Northeast.
Powell, who has been farming with her husband for 30 years, shared her personal experience with “climate grief.” The couple purchased their farm property in 1998, and were committed to staying there for as long as they could. Although they were able to adapt with weather changes throughout the years, the major heat wave in 2021 led to depression for the couple. They were both experiencing mental health and emotional behavioral changes and had to make the “devastating” decision to leave their property.
While working at Extension, Powell recognized other farmers exhibiting mental health issues and started educating about the reality of climate grief.
Climate grief is the “natural, appropriate and justified response” to “loss, or anticipated loss, and change in the environment.” This feeling is completely normal – and shows that you recognize and care about the changes happening in the world. However, climate grief isn’t talked about much.
Powell explained you can experience many types of climate grief. It can stem from slow onset changes – like witnessing the loss of an ecosystem, or a forest dwindling in size – or from extreme weather events (also referred to as acute disasters). People can have vicarious grief (feeling bad for others in a climate crisis), anticipatory grief (fear of what’s to come) and secondary grief (the loss of a tradition or activity due to climate change).
What makes climate grief so different from other forms of grief is that it’s intense, complicated and overwhelming. All at once, someone could be enraged at leaders for not doing enough to protect the environment, terrified about what’s to come, sad at the loss of species and guilty that they alone are not doing enough. Not only is climate grief intense, but it can feel very isolating because in the U.S., we don’t have common practices to deal with the loss. It’s not normal to request bereavement or host a funeral for climate loss.
Anyone can be impacted by climate grief, but it’s seen more frequently in farmers and ag workers. Environmental changes really impact those in agriculture because their livelihoods rely on the environment. Farmers have a front row seat to these environmental changes – and an extreme weather event could ruin their business.
These changes also highly affect ag workers, as they “end up supporting farmers and producers” in their time of need, according to Powell, and their job is threatened by the loss of farms.
People can react to climate grief in different ways: sadness, fear, anger – or even positivity (hope that times will get better). People may experience headaches, insomnia, loss of appetite, alienation, increased drinking and more. Being able to manage these reactions is essential because “fear that gets stuck becomes anxiety … anger that gets stuck becomes hatred” and “sadness that gets stuck becomes depression.”
Talking to each other about climate grief “can help us to feel better” and empower us to act. Powell mentioned the importance of “intentionally seeking out states of resilience” – finding hobbies or activities to do to take your mind off the change in climate and remind yourself of what brings you joy.
If you are struggling with climate grief, you are not alone. For more resources on how to cope, visit extension.oregonstate.edu/climate-stress-grief-building-resilience- farmers-ranchers.
by Kelsi Devolve
