A New Paradigm: How climate change is shaping mental landscapes in the Great Lakes | Great Lakes Now (2024)

In a weekly Good Grief Network session held on July 25, time and space were created for participants to reflect on their feelings of uncertainty in an unstable environment over Zoom. Trained facilitators kept time for each participant to speak while the other participants bore witness as listeners. The overarching rule was no cross-talk, which means not directly responding or referring to what a person shared.

The session began with a grounding exercise, where participants closed their eyes and imagined themselves in a safe space in nature. They were encouraged to embody any sensory details associated with this place. At the same time, the facilitators played a humming vocal melody with the lyrics: “Change arrives, I can flow.”

When the song faded into silence, participants began to better familiarize themselves with their Good Grief Network community by introducing themselves to the group with a personal high and low moment they experienced that week.

As the introductions wrapped up and the floor was opened for sharing, a wave of apprehension rippled through the air. Tenderly, the first participant unmuted their microphone to reveal what being with the uncertainty of an ecologically degrading planet meant in their life.

A mother described that parenting a child for an uncertain future felt like she was building a ship for an unpredictable sea.

Another participant admitted that despite dedicating their career to environmental work, they felt overwhelmed by “imposter syndrome” for not seeming credentialed enough for the immensity of these problems.

The ecological crisis is a personal and societal tolerance issue, noted another participant, further elaborating on how they think it has to do with a person’s capacity for uncertainty largely depending on their experiences, power and privilege.

A mental health care worker expressed feelings of horror, how the tools they always used for clients were not even helping them to sleep at night. Specifically when it came to thinking about the ecological polycrisis.

This mental healthcare worker is not alone. Many mental health professionals are reporting how climate change is beyond their scope of practice. The rapidly changing climate is a growing concern in therapy sessions, where many therapists are realizing their training has inadequately prepared them to help their clients with climate distress, or eco-anxiety.

The climate crisis is also giving rise to peer-to-peer support groups, like the Good Grief Network. This international organization was brought to life in 2016 by founder LaUra Schmidt and cofounder Aimee Lewis Reau, out of Lansing, Michigan.

“Most of the world’s leaders are not doing anything with the urgency that is needed to tackle such an important crisis,” said founder Schmidt. “I can at least bring people together to have these really hard conversations where spaces aren’t being created in the dominant culture to do that, and then help empower people to then take that next step.”

The Good Grief Network follows a 10-step program developed by Schmidt and Lewis Reau to help reorient collective climate distress toward meaningful action.

The Good Grief Network believes that releasing personal concerns about the state of the world is critical in transforming a person’s inner world. The goal is to then transform the relationships between participants, aiming to create a trickle effect into each participant’s own community network. This, in turn, could contribute to system change and planetary transformation.

“We have to learn how to be with those emotions that overwhelm us,” said Schmidt. The idea is that once people stop running away from these emotions, they can start taking steps towards the repair of the actual earth.

Some psychologists have taken a special interest in climate distress, calling into consideration external factors as well as individual behavior in the context of climate change.

“We’re not completely responsible as individuals,” said Dr. Susan Clayton, a conservation psychologist at the College of Wooster in Ohio and a leading author for the Sixth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “In fact, there have been these efforts by corporations to try and deflect responsibility by convincing us that it’s all about individual behavior.”

One example is the idea of the individual carbon footprint, launched by oil giant BP in 2004. Dr. Clayton says it’s very common to feel agentless in making a difference as an individual when a person knows the government is not stepping up to the plate.

“Certainly, you’re more likely to have an impact when you’re a member of a group,” said Dr. Clayton. “That might increase that feeling of efficacy and be an empowerment.”

However, Dr. Clayton says the long-term research on support groups is unclear and she is not implying that it is a magic solution, although it is a start. She also examines the psychology of justice and its applications to environmental attitudes.

“What we’re seeing a lot of is anger, especially among people who feel that the climate crisis was something that they… were left with rather than something they participated in,” said Dr. Clayton. “But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because anger can be very energizing.”

At the same time, Dr. Clayton says when climate change dramatically alters someone’s way of life, it can cause them to feel that the knowledge they have about the world no longer fits.

In Wisconsin, a changing climate has uprooted cultural lifeways for the Menominee Nation, impacting tribal mental health.

The tribe’s name “Menominee” comes from the Ojibwe word for wild rice, or “manoomin,” since this crop has historically been a staple in the Menominee diet. In the Menominee language, the tribe calls themself “Mamāceqtaw,” or the people. Today, the Mamāceqtaw import most of their wild rice from other tribal nations.

“There’s multiple efforts on the reservation to kind of like revitalize the wild rice,” said Mamāceqtaw member Marci Hawpetoss. “We can harvest rice on the reservation, but it’s nowhere to the amount that is needed for everyone.”

The Mamāceqtaw are beginning new research to uncover and address why it isn’t growing the way it used to.

“I think it’s important for us to understand the impact of climate change on the wild rice and environment and all of our foods,” said Hawpetoss.

Wild rice is an annual aquatic plant that requires shallow bodies of water to grow. A 2023 study by the Kawe Gidaa-naanaagadawendaamin Manoomin Research Collaborative, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and their tribal partners discovered that higher wild rice abundance was associated with low precipitation and water levels in the early summer and colder winters with longer ice duration.

With less frequent deep winter freezes, the roots of perennial plants aren’t being killed back. This means there is less room for wild rice to sprout when it germinates in the spring. Hotter weather and more intense rainfall also provide a breeding ground for brown spot disease, which devastates wild rice harvests.

In 2022, a study by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission looked at additional factors affecting wild rice. They found that shifts in land use, the quality and quantity of water, and climate change through the colonization of the upper Great Lakes region have all impacted wild rice watersheds.

“I think for a lot of people, including myself, it’s really scary because it’s like the core part of our identity. It’s one of our sacred, traditional foods,” said Hawpetoss. “It’s like the symbol of sovereignty and who are we without that?”

Hawpetoss says substance abuse and suicidality are prominent issues on the Menominee reservation that she believes stem from the disruptions to their cultural ways of life, through colonialism and climate change.

“I think it would do a lot more good than maybe anyone even realizes from our diet all the way to our mental health to be able to revive the wild rice,” said Hawpetoss.

Just like the Mamāceqtaw have been forced to leave behind a key part of their sacred, traditional diet, people in Ottawa, Canada are being forced to reshape their identity around the cold.

In Canada’s capital, Ottawans treasure the Rideau Canal Skateway as the world’s largest natural ice skating rink. According to the Guinness World Records, it is equivalent to 90 Olympic skating rinks in size. It has operated every year since opening in 1970, until closing for the first time in the 2022-2023 winter season due to the lack of ice.

“We talk about ourselves as one of the coldest national capitals on Earth… We think we’re really hearty,” said William van Geest. He is the program coordinator of Ecology Ottawa, a group that helped organize a community vigil for the closing of the skateway. “It was quite a blow to that identity… I think there’s kind of that shock in that injury, and then just grief.”

The skateway reopened this past winter season, but conditions looked different. Only a 1.9 kilometer long section was able to open out of the full 7.8 kilometers.

“I actually went out three times on that very first day it was open,” said Van Geest. “It was packed out, and to be honest, the conditions were kind of junky.”

According to the National Capital Commission (NCC) that oversees the skateway, the skating season would usually run from early January to early March. This year, the season was cut into two short stretches in late January and February for a total of 10 days — the skateway’s shortest season in history after the complete shutdown the previous year.

“Every skate that you have on the canal may be your very last skate, not just of the season, but of the Rideau Canal,” said Van Geest. “So it’s really the sense of fragility and impending loss.”

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that in the Great Lakes region, the amount of ice has decreased by around five percent every decade for the last 50 years. In other words, the ice season is shrinking by one day each year on average, according to NOAA physical scientist James Kessler. He studies hydrodynamics, lake ice, and hydrology for the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL).

Another factor in the changing ice coverage trends is the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which includes the El Niño and La Niña cycles. With a warming atmosphere, the feedback between the ocean and the atmosphere that causes this natural climate phenomenon becomes stronger. In turn, El Niño and La Niña swings have become more extreme. Last year and this year have been El Niño years.

“El Niño essentially changes the position of the Polar Jet Stream,” said Kessler. “That jet stream, how it swings north and south across North America, determines where the air comes from in the winter over the Great Lakes… if it’s coming from way up north that air is gonna be really cold and if it’s coming from down south the air is not going to be so cold.”

El Niño may have contributed to these past two record low ice coverage seasons for the Rideau Canal Skateway, but Kessler says we need to look at the data of a changing climate over the past 50 years.

“Water has a lot of thermal mass so it takes a lot of heat to warm them up,” said Kessler. “So when you have short-lived temperature swings… the lakes aren’t immediately impacted… but that said if you have persistent, warm temperatures, they’re going to warm up, you know, and we are seeing that with the lakes.”

While there has been variability in maximum ice cover during this timeframe, Kessler says the amount is decreasing on average, which hasn’t changed. This leads him to believe the trend will continue.

As the atmosphere warms, Chicago continues to experience rain events that were unimaginable as construction for the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP) began in the 1970s to tackle flooding. In June 2021, it became clear the Deep Tunnel system wasn’t working, disproportionately affecting communities of color whose basem*nts were still pooling with combined sewer water during storm events. In July 2023, the 110 miles of underground combined sewer systems failed during unprecedented amounts of rainfall, contributing to over 12,000 flooded basem*nts.

As remnants of Tropical Depression Beryl traversed the city this summer, Chicagoans are only just now receiving financial aid from last year’s floods as their basem*nts are flooding another time around.

“Apartment buildings and single-family homes roofs, siding, living quarters, basem*nts, utility furnaces, water heaters, air-conditioning and laundry appliances were severely damaged… and in many instances totally destroyed,” wrote Alderwoman Mitts, “As well as treasured family photos, awards, and other irreplaceable mementos.”

The toll was not just physical.

“Let’s just say that I, like countless other community members, were greatly frustrated, dismayed, saddened, and overly concerned by the ongoing environmental extreme weather condition flooding attacks on our valued personal residences,” said Alderwoman Mitts.

She is working with other Chicago officials and residents to achieve her philosophy, “unity in the community,” and keep West Side neighborhoods “safe, strong, healthy, and vibrant for our residents for today, as well as for the future.”

The impact of climate change on physical landscapes is evidently the tip of an iceberg, and the psychological effects on individuals and communities are beginning to emerge from beneath the depths of our understanding.

As more people experience the effects of a changing climate, a larger community is built through shared personal loss. With conversations through unifying support groups like the Good Grief Network, people are starting to have a say in how their psychological landscapes are being reinvented.

Catch more news at Great Lakes Now:

Inside is Not the Answer: Air quality in the Great Lakes

Disappointed dogs, sad skiers, frustrated fishermen

Featured image: The Menominee tribe prays to the water for protection, as it is seen as a powerful spirit that symbolizes life for their people. A changing climate shifts the behavior of water from its natural cycle. (Illustration by Lucy Engelman)