Sarah Jaquette Ray’s A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety offers itself as an ‘existential toolkit’ for the ‘climate generation.’ This book makes an overdue and very welcome contribution to the world, where the mental health impacts and cascading losses that climate change generates are increasing rapidly. It synthesises a range of psychological theory, personal experience, Buddhist philosophy and activist self-care wisdom. This is organised into a series of strategies that can help people of any age to play the long game of fighting for climate justice.

As a ‘field guide,’ this is not an exhaustive book on climate anxiety or how to cope with it — although I am sure no such book could exist, given the complexity of the issue. Rather, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety offers integral entry points. Ray normalises the diversity of emotional experiences people can face when encountering climate change, validates and advocates engaging with them and offers a range of self-care and action-oriented guidance for helping respond to them. While it alone can’t promise to help everyone ‘keep their cool on a warming planet’ all the time, it certainly provides an important range of wisdom, in the form of personal anecdotes, reflections, research and theory, and direct advice, for those who are struggling to manage feelings of overwhelm and resignation.

This is one of the first books filling what we might awkwardly call the climate-focused ‘self-help’ genre (for others, see e.g., Grose, Reference Grose2020; Salamon & Gage, Reference Salamon and Gage2020), a market that is likely to expand rapidly. While the broader literature on eco-anxiety is dominated by psychological approaches, Ray is an intersectional feminist environmental educator, which means this book makes a critical intervention, and one that is likely to ensure it stands out for years to come. Connecting diverse social movements such as those for racial justice and prison abolition to climate change, and drawing on queer theory, environmental humanities and a rigorous critique of colonial capitalism ensures that Ray’s version of climate self-care avoids the de-politicised, therapeutic, individualistic neoliberalism that can pervade so much of this kind of work. This compelling approach not only ensures the roots of environmental distress — extractive capitalism — are not obscured, it also means the argument for self-care is more likely to land with its target audience: the increasingly sociologically-literate climate-concerned youth of today, and tomorrow.

Relatedly, Ray works hard not to separate the ‘internal,’ and often feminised, labour (e.g., mindfulness, self-care and resilience) from the ‘external,’ and more celebrated, action (e.g., campaigning, educating, protesting) of climate justice activism. Rather, she affirms throughout that activist resilience is integral for ecological sustainability, concluding in Chapter 7 that ‘interior work is not just useful for sustaining the external work; it is the greatest form of resistance to the unjust structures we seek to change. If the effort to thrive undermines our ability to thrive, we are serving our own oppression’ (p. 135). Building on the works of Audre Lorde (Reference Lorde1988) and adrienne maree brown (Reference brown2019) that advocate for the radical potential of self-care and pleasure, this book is refreshing in its persistent call to reorient environmentalism away from a narrative of sacrifice, scarcity and martyrdom, towards one of desire, nourishment and joy.

A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety is written in a very accessible style, making it a perfect choice for undergraduate course readings but also appropriate for secondary students. The introduction, ‘Embracing life in the Anthropocene,’ provides a brief overview of the risks of burnout for activists and the increasing rates of ecological distress amongst young people; advocates for the book’s thesis of cultivating resilience as an activist strategy; and briefly explores Ray’s personal and professional journey which compelled the writing of the book.

Chapter 1, ‘Get schooled on the role of emotions in climate justice work,’ provides a brief overview of the significance of ecological distress, including examples of a student who starved herself, an activist who self-immolated and the birth strike movement. Ray then makes the case that social justice activists have long understood the importance of, and practiced, self-care, and argues that the climate movement could and should learn from this.

Whereas Chapter 1 argues that understanding ecological distress is important, Chapter 2, ‘Cultivate climate wisdom,’ is longer and offers philosophy, research, guidance and strategies for understanding and managing it. The chapter first discusses the relations and tensions between climate science and ecological emotions, and then outlines some key findings from climate change communication research. This upskills the reader in understanding not only their own emotions, but those of others, and thus, how to better communicate about this highly emotional issue. The chapter then explores some mindfulness strategies. In terms of offering one of these as a recommendation to a time-pressed friend or as a reading for tertiary (or even secondary) students, I would be inclined to go for Chapter 2.

I think Chapter 3 is the other chapter I would most likely recommend, and it pairs well with Chapter 2. ‘Claim your calling and scale your action’ offers guidance on how individual people can find their own meaningful, rewarding and sustainable modes of activism, and reiterates that this is important for preventing burnout and despair. Ray contends that it is important that we let go of the myth of spectacular and immediately measurable forms of action. Arguing that this narrative is patriarchal, through its erasure and devaluation of feminised forms of care, witness, thought and reflection, Ray also emphasises that the rush to urgency is often irrational and exclusive, and can reinforce rather than solve climate injustice. Advocating for pleasurable forms of activism, building relationships with others and for deconstructing the self-perpetuating myth of personal inefficacy, this chapter is crucial reading for people feeling overwhelmed, disempowered, helpless, ineffective, or otherwise confused about how they can contribute to addressing climate change.

Chapters 4 and 5 move towards communication and narrative. ‘Hack the story’ advocates for literacy about how the media industry works, and why negative ‘doom and gloom’ stories are more likely to be convincing, compelling, and thus perpetuated in newspapers and online. Ray contends that by thinking critically about which stories serve whose ends, we can be better equipped to change the narrative, both by reframing stories and thus, by changing the world that those narratives refer to. ‘Be less right and more in relation’ focuses more on interpersonal communication, and how to build consensus or at least compromise with others who might normally disagree with us.

Chapters 6 and 7 return to discuss emotions and self-care more directly. ‘Move beyond hope, ditch guilt, and laugh more’ advocates, as the title suggests, for pursuing and rejecting particular emotions. Ray calls us to let go of the guilt that can paralyse environmental activists in the developed world. Rather than avoidance-generating guilt or the potential passivity of hope, Ray advocates for clarifying our desires, becoming empowered and practicing reverence and gratitude in order to cultivate joy in the world. ‘Resist burnout’ returns to the importance of playing the long game, and reminds readers that ‘those of us who feel the most passionate about social change are also the most likely to fail to be considerate of ourselves’ (p. 128). With additional lists of tips in this chapter, it will be valuable reading for those who can no longer face their activism and are blaming themselves for that rather than celebrating the successes they have achieved, taking a well-earned rest and resourcing themselves for future efforts.

The conclusion, ‘Feed what you want to grow’ offers some final qualifying thoughts on resilience. Ray contests definitions that would lock in vulnerability, powerlessness and oppression, and also cautions against appropriating Indigenous strategies of survivance. Our resilience must also be, at the same time, resistance to those systems — capitalism, colonialism, heteropatriarchy — that require us to be resilient.

Ray’s work will be greatly appreciated, I believe, by environmental educators and their students.