As an aging, six foot six, straight, white guy, it goes without saying that I don’t like thinking about my feelings very much. And I certainly don’t like talking about them.
But these are strange times we live in. And after writing countless columns and articles over the past couple of decades commenting on the state of the world, to my own surprise I’m writing this column on the state of my own head.
To be more specific, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about anger. I want to explore it here; not because I assume anybody is especially interested in my personal psychology, but rather because anger is widespread these days. I suspect you might be feeling it too.
If I’m honest, I often feel like I’m choking on my own anger. It’s a physical sensation that starts in my toes and works its way up. I’m surprised the people around me can’t feel the heat rising off my skin.
Maybe my triggers are similar to yours:
Donald Trump’s non-stop baiting of Canada as the “51st state” + Elon Musk’s overt support of fascist causes + J.D. Vance taunting Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office + etc, etc = crazy-making.
The world, it seems, has no shortage of maniacs intent on creating new problems.
Meanwhile, the real problems – the big things affecting the future of our planet and our health – are struggling to be noticed.
Two recent examples:
This past January was the warmest on record, despite the fact that we’re in a La Niña event, which normally brings global cooling. Scientists aren’t sure why, but it seems increasingly likely that global warming is accelerating.
And new research has shown that plastic particles in human brains have increased by 50% over the past eight years, with dementia patients showing up to 10 times higher plastic levels compared to others. It turns out the ultimate endpoint for the countless tonnes of plastic crap we’ve ejected into the environment is our own bodies.
You’d think these two terrifying stories would warrant more than one day of press attention. But instead, they were washed away by the constant barrage of Trump derangement.
So most days I’m sitting with my rage trying to figure out what to do about it.
This recent study is on to something important. Participants were asked to track their eco-emotions (i.e., eco-anxiety, eco-anger, eco-sadness), general emotions (i.e., anxiety, anger, sadness), and pro-environmental intentions and behaviours daily over a 60-day period in response to consumption of news related to climate change. It turns out that eco-anger was the only predictor of useful environmental actions and intentions. People who experienced eco-anger on one day were far more likely to act in an environmentally friendly manner the next day. No other emotion was similarly motivating.
The other striking finding was that the “momentary experience of a given eco-emotion was associated with the momentary activation of its corresponding non-climate-related emotion, and not with the activation of other emotions.” In other words, it’s hard to experience anger about climate change without – at least for a while – feeling angry more generally.
The lesson here is twofold: first, we shouldn’t lose our anger. Anger at the terrible things happening in the world is logical and appropriate and one of the things to lean on to carry us through the next few years. Anger can lead to progress. As generations of people involved in the essential, ongoing battles for equal rights know first-hand: rage can be a fuel to fight injustice and help us build anew.
But the anger needs to be harnessed. It shouldn’t be taken out on those around us or manifested as generalized grumpiness. And it’s wholly counterproductive to allow anger to cause greater division among those of us working to build a better future.
So these days I’m focusing my fury. Eco-anger beats eco-anxiety any day. We’re in this fight together.
Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute, the co-author of two bestselling books on the effects of pollution on human health, and the executive producer of Plastic People, a 2024 documentary chronicling the damage done by microplastics in the human body.
