There was a time in my life when I could be defensive and easily angered. I believed with an insufferable intensity that personal acts of protest had to be staged at my dinner table.
During this period, I would abstain from drinking water if I had forgotten a reusable mug and wasting food triggered visions of methane compounds and landfill fires. I used expensive, clumpy mascara and bar shampoo because it came from a ‘zero waste’ store. I only ate vegan food and purged my house of products with palm oil. I ran a waste audit at my high school. I watched Greta Thunberg’s TED Talk — and many other TED Talks. This was a time in my life when I considered myself a climate activist.
If I am being honest, I can say with gratitude that these behaviours were confined to a short period of my life: an adolescent ‘phase’ not unlike my friends spending their minimum wage pay at Hot Topic and watching all the installments of Paranormal Activity. During this period, I saw all of my actions as paramount. I weighed them in a moralistic tally that was not only exhausting for me to track, but made me live with the haunting belief that if each move was not executed with perfection, we could not save the climate.
While I can now look back on this phase and grimace in hesitancy and laugh, I must also admit my disappointment in the supposed activism of my youth. It feels like my energy could have been better spent. The fact that I completely ‘spent’ my energy toward climate action shows a fatal flaw in my 15-year-old tactic — if my actions truly aligned with my morals, I shouldn’t have so easily lost my drive to continue with my activism. Yet here I am, not using a Diva cup on my period.
The spontaneous nature of how my teenage activism started and ended is still a question to me. I truly had a deep concern for the environment, but the further I invested in these habits and products, the more performative I began to feel.
What I can say is that my philosophy became increasingly nihilistic as my years of eco-friendly living seemed ineffectual next to the damaging climate reports I was absorbing through Thunberg’s urgent rhetoric. To clarify, I am not blaming Thunberg for my disengagement with climate activism. I was young, tired, academically pressured, and focused on friends — something that ‘eco-friendly living’ did not complement without consistent efforts.
With this compounded exhaustion, although my exposure to the climate crisis itself had not diminished, the physicality of my climate-related anxiety and fears had. Eventually and inevitably, my climate activism streak wore itself out.
Activism in the digital age
Digital activism is a method for raising awareness and incentivizing action through online actions such as messaging servers, social media posts, hashtags, and petitions to name a few examples. As with any medium, there are advantages and disadvantages that can raise debate over its potency.
Like wearing a pink ribbon in solidarity with breast cancer patients, or making donations to humanitarian aid organizations participating in digital activism, for many of us, represents our care for a cause. Digital activism spreads information, and stimulates discourse. When things go viral online, the barriers to what is deemed conversationally appropriate tend to break down. The rapid spread of awareness can, in turn, spark mass mobilization and fundraising efforts. But can it be captured and relied upon to effect lasting change?
People frequently ask the question of digital activism’s lasting effect, for there may be an issue at the fundamental level: social media’s goal is not to alter our societal systems but to keep you engaged. Engagement requires a novelty that goes against the primary requirements for lasting change: measurable and steady commitment.
This was a point underpinned in an email conversation I had with Hanna Morris, an assistant professor at U of T’s School of the Environment, about the effects of social media on climate crisis awareness.
“In our current digital environment characterized by hyper-capitalistic social media companies owned by just a few billionaires with no real stake in democracy,” she wrote, “these platforms are becoming less and less viable as a tool and terrain for climate movement-building.”
I am not discounting the lucrativeness of digital activism for short-term campaign efforts, but I want to warn against its potential ramifications when sustained support is required. As digital activism takes hold, the methods of communication that older movements of activism relied upon, such as door-to-door campaigning, have given way to more targeted resources, like podcasts and social media accounts. This is not necessarily a bad situation. Smaller efforts make a difference, but it is a difference that is difficult to track. When activists’ campaigns want to change systems of power where impacts will be sustained on a global scale, these smaller tactics have to be applied in innumerable and varying directions, which makes it hard to have a unified voice.
There is also the factor of anonymity that digital activism seemingly affords: it is as easy to join online movements as it is to leave them, and in either case, your external identity is rarely scathed. We don’t necessarily have to commit to a cause, but can pass through them like tourists — sacrificing depth — and the functional connections required for effective activism may not form in the same manner online.
Alternately, we may form strong parasocial relationships with various activists and organizations online, and then struggle to mirror that passion in our daily interactions. In both cases, one becomes exposed to the possibility that information is not effective in the way it needs to be: there is a risk of disconnect, a stratification in our awareness of crisis.
Cyclic overexposure
Over the history of climate crisis activism, we see a trend of placing moral responsibility onto the consumer and not on the system — from the anti-pollution 1970s ‘Crying Indian’ ad which depicted an Indigenous man crying at the sight of air pollution and factory smoke, to the 2010s ‘zero waste lifestyle.’
Sometimes, without regularly checking myself, I still find myself slipping into subliminal self-accusation about the climate crisis and its effects: “This is about you, because of you.” Rarely do I think, “it is up to me,” and even more seldomly, “it is up to us.” Like something out of an adventure story, when I am told the future needs saving, I see myself as the individual saviour.
It is not difficult for the unpinned scale of the climate issue, with cities subjected to unfightable fires and mass migration, to reach a state of incomprehensible destruction on par with Greek epics or The Lord of the Rings.
As it happens, there is a perceived ‘culture of martyrdom’ among some activists that makes their vocation uniquely pressured.
There is an internalized criticality targeted at one’s own ability to succeed, which criticality outdoes a personal desire to ‘do well,’ as the expectations that activists are told to meet are becoming increasingly defined by words such as “urgent,” “global,” and “justice.” Climate activists in particular are also posed with a challenge that may cause a more radical and pressured sense of individual importance. For the standard person, the significance of our climate problem is only comprehensible through platforms that can make the global platforms like news networks, systemic reviews, and social media. But even after one accomplishes some form of cerebral understanding, the effects of the global climate crisis go generally unnoticed for many of us in our daily lives.
Societal Stonewalling
To make the point clear: the climate crisis, while very real, must be felt internally rather than externally experienced. We must place responsibility on climate activists and media to sustain awareness in populations that might not otherwise grasp their immediate vulnerability. Given that awareness is now primarily raised through social media, sustaining attention on the climate crisis can easily lead to news oversaturation and fear-mongering, as movements try to maintain algorithmic favour.
“This is a real problem,” Morris wrote, “Without understanding how certain climate impacts have come to be, nihilism can creep in when apocalyptic images proliferate across newsfeeds, [making it] seem like nothing can be done about it.”
A certain sort of pressure builds when your internal existence is at odds with the environment around you — when you fear the extinction of animals you’ve never encountered, dread the possibility of your ordered food arriving in Styrofoam, or realize the news sources your parents read do not tell them they are in a crisis. When I seek to relieve this pressure, I am told by the Canadian government that “fuel switching, increases in efficiency, the modernization of industrial processes and structural changes in the economy” are the main contributors to emission reductions: solutions in which I play no individual role.
Our constant access to large-scale climate crisis issues may leave us feeling hopeless rather than empowered. When we see statistics affecting thousands or millions of lives, witness progress only through United Nations (UN) initiatives, or observe harms occurring thousands of miles away, our individual efforts may feel insignificant.
A 2024 study from the Journal of Environmental Psychology shows that when collective efforts to address the climate crisis are perceived as ineffectual, we experience climate-related anxiety, which can lead to paralysis, and in this state of paralysis, we disengage. This process is similar to stonewalling, where an individual withdraws to preserve a sense of control in an event of fear — but in this case, it is about control and fear on a global scale.
In 2021, a Pew Research Center survey found that nearly seven in 10 Gen Z individuals who engage with climate crisis content on social media are more likely to feel anxious about the future. As part of this majority, I ask myself: how do I counteract a stress response meant to protect my well-being? How do I cope with my feelings of lost agency and the urge to reclaim that agency through withdrawal?
How do I stay engaged and yet unharmed?
Action as remedy
Studies on activists’ well-being often highlight a recurring theme: pragmatism and collective action serve as buffers against burnout. This is where I recognize a nuanced weakness in my teenage choices; while personal actions, when implemented collectively, can make a measurable impact, the problem arises when we measure our personal impact against the collective. According to a 2022 study led by the Yale School of Public Health, when we focus solely on individual changes like recycling and turning off the lights, we are no more likely to mitigate climate-related mental health issues. Without collective, tangible engagement at the social level, the impression that our actions are insignificant persists, increasing our likelihood of burnout.
But where does collective action start?
The case for thinking small
I notice a dissonance between the calls for action from activists and governments online, and people’s awareness of how they can contribute to change. People are bombarded with information about the climate crisis’ dire consequences, much more often than being informed on what can be done on an individual level to confront the crisis.
So, I asked Morris how one can feel empowered to take consistent action while navigating our current digital environment. Her response: “Put down your phone and go outside and meet-up with peers in person!” Okay!
I decided to attend U of T’s volunteer fair this September in 28.8 degrees Celsius heat — nearly seven degrees above the seasonal average — and meet students working in their communities to promote climate crisis awareness. Here is what I found that day:
Human Nature Projects Ontario organizes park cleanups, invasive species removals, and tree plantings, and creates educational podcasts about the climate crisis.
Bikechain offers free bicycle rentals for students and runs bike maintenance workshops. Here, you can help promote student participation in the community or volunteer in ‘the shop’ to fix bikes.
Climate Justice UofT is advocating for the university’s divestment from fossil fuels. They have participated in climate strikes, organized multiple sit-ins on campus, and pushed for “fossil-free” financing: an initiative to ban the fossil fuel industry from funding climate research at U of T.
While talking to students at this event, I noticed a pattern that exemplifies my research linking climate anxiety and collective action.
Kiyan Sajadi, a first-year Rotman commerce student and executive member for Human Nature Projects Ontario, said in an interview with The Varsity, “One really important thing that I live by is [that] it’s not about a few people making big changes; it’s about a lot of people making small changes. That’s how we will defeat global warming and the environmental issues.”
However, when I talked to students near the event, I noticed a stark difference between their views of the climate crisis. “I feel like we get a little bit overwhelmed when we see such a big problem, when we are the future,” Riyanna Persaud, a criminology and socio-legal studies student said to me. “It’s kind of scary to think that we have to handle that, but I don’t know… I just feel like it can be a little discouraging when it seems like such a massive problem.”
As I talk to students, conduct research, and revisit some of my past choices — choices that I can only describe as ‘young’ — I find a recurring point I must now dwell upon. There is a moral to this story, a conclusion best summarized in a four-word sentence written by Professor Morris: “Collective action is crucial.”
It has become clear to me while writing this that when the call for action is framed as either too big or too difficult, we should approach it with skepticism. There is an ingrained notion communicated daily through our movies, fictional stories, and even love songs — that passion means acting against our best interest, against our health. This is a troubling foundation upon which to build anything, especially activism.
But when we go online, we are fed a compelling montage of exceptionalism — stories favoured by the algorithm because we want to match the extraordinary evils we see in the world with extraordinary good. However, this often leads to a glorification of the activist, redefining their work to standards impossible for anyone to meet, and then we ask them to meet these standards continuously.
Here is where I propose to create a distinction between individual action and personal habits, shifting our focus to local or small-scale actions: efforts that don’t feel so easily undone by a fast food order. When I research how to reduce my carbon footprint, I want more than just tangible recommendations about shopping second-hand and travelling by train.
It is through connecting with our neighbourhood communities, learning the names of city and regional officials, and following local news that we discover important initiatives needing our support — initiatives like protesting against Highway 413, opposing new quarry approvals, and challenging the province’s decision to abandon the idea of a deposit-return system for non-alcoholic beverages.
Unlike national and international climate targets such as the UN initiatives and Canada’s emission reduction report, the average citizen can become the ideal candidate to run a campaign on the local level, and their success would be palpably felt in their community.
You see, with all the places to go off-track, burn out, numb out, or be guided into making repetitive actions with forgettable results, many can approach the precarious desire to productively and adequately save our planet. We need to push for an accessible online blueprint that directs the masses to effective, local, and system-changing initiatives — because, if we know where to look, the options are already there.
