Holding Climate emotions: Reimagining Climate Dialogue Through Feeling and Community
Photo: Sarah Law
I have come to avoid climate conferences, events, and forums in the last few years. It has been difficult to sit in sessions that talk about “solutions” to the climate crisis that are really about maintaining a strong economy, as if our economy is not built on the foundation of exploitation, degradation, and violence and continues to be so.
I wish that the Victoria Forum had more focus on climate justice and the real fears of youth, and that there was enough bravery to hold the disappointment, fear, anxiety, and anger that many youth feel when we think about our futures.
Climate grief and anxiety are on the rise for young people, youth climate justice organizers, and researchers. Sabrina Guzman, Abhay Sachal, Naomi Leung, Lily Barraclough, and I are just a few of these people in this space who have been doing this work. I have written two theses as an undergraduate sociology honours and graduate student at Simon Fraser University on world-ending feelings, uncertain futures, and the effects of living in constant anticipation of crisis.
Youth know that we are not the only ones who feel burdened by the crushing weight of the world, but we will be the ones to inherit it and the impacts of continuous climate action delay and inaction, like pushing net zero emissions from 2035 to 2050, approving more pipelines in the name of “protecting” our Nation from fascism. (As if we don’t have fascism at home.)
I became so frustrated by these kinds of events after eight years of being in the climate/social innovation space that in the Summer of 2023, I held my own climate conference alongside my friend Naomi Leung, who is also a youth climate organizer and artist. We came together and designed a full-day conference called Holding Climate Emotions.
Naomi and I collaborated and worked with other youth on the frontlines of climate justice organizer, land defenders, and people in the climate emotions space to build a program full of workshops to speak from the heart and speak truthfully about our fears for the future, our frustrations and disappointments with false solutions, and the constant betrayal of stalling climate action - and what it feels like as youth to be left behind. We held trauma-informed space to process feelings in community, bring people together, and share resources for survival.
I facilitated my climate grief and radical imagination workshop, where I asked participants to envision a just climate future, because Herbert Marcuse said it best: the imagination is a form of political protest (1969). We sold out of 120 tickets. There is a clear demand for honest, bold, and real conversations about the climate crisis that are unafraid to sit with difficult, hard-to-hold feelings. We know that when we hold them together, name the difficulties, and practice sitting with the hard realities of what is at stake, what has already been lost, and what might never return.
I start my climate grief workshop with a land acknowledgement and tell them what my research found from talking with climate organizers about their experiences with climate grief and anxiety – how these feelings are often not just about the environment, but that there is this continuous mourning of trust and belief in liberal political institutions, corporate social responsibility, and greenwashing. There is a process of their grief that extends beyond just “climate” concern – but a mourning of worlds and promised futures that no longer exist. And that hope for new futures must be placed and imagined in spaces beyond reliance on the same systems and structures that have caused this crisis. I open the conversation to the group to share their own experiences, knowledge, and stories about climate grief and tell them not to be afraid of their feelings. That grief is a beautiful thing – it shows us that we are connected and committed to the worlds we are fighting to keep.
I understand that these kinds of conversations may not be “appropriate” at something like the Victoria Forum. But I can’t help but wonder how incredible it would have been to be able to have the chance to see and hear from people who are leaders in this space, who care deeply about the work they do, and hold so much power to shape the futures that we will inherit to talk openly about how they, as people, and not just in their jobs, really feel and think about the climate crisis.
I understand if there is hesitancy to open up spaces like this. There is a fear around being able to hold it. Maybe there is fear in what might happen if we break the professional barrier and talk about the real, sticky, and hard feelings that lie under the surface.
Photo: Sarah Law at the Victoria Forum 2025
But I’ve learned as a dialogue practitioner and alumni of the SFU Morris J Wosk Center for Dialogue’s semester for dialogue that we cannot avoid the difficult feelings that lie under the surface of a hard conversation full of complexity. There is power in naming what is begging to come up. I craved conversations that got to the heart of the matter, where we discussed our expertise, our fields, our organizations, and our work - but also about who we are as people. This is only part of what I love and learned about the practice and power of dialogue as a relational tool for building understanding in moments of crisis, political polarization, and uncertainty. I’ve learned from some of the best Diane Finewood, Chris Yakimov, Elodie Jaquet, Ginger Gosnell Meyers, Alice Frances, and Shauna Sylvester.
Hope is a discipline (Mariame Kaba), and it is something that needs to be trained. It is something you study, live with, and practice. To sustain our abilities to still hope and work towards better futures, we need to practice becoming emotionally malleable. I have learned this lesson on what it really means to be resilient in the face of crisis from Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who writes in her book Undrowned: Black feminist lessons from Marine Mammals (2020) how we can learn from non-human kin how to adapt to crisis.
I write in my master’s thesis where I argue that when living in anticipation, the economic conditions and structure that operate on a moral logic of coldness, rationality, masculine “unemotionality”, this hard economic sensibility and logic can harden us and make us more rigid. We can become more restrictive (with our borders, with our wallets, with our compassion) as a protective mechanism against anticipated threats (like the climate crisis or economic collapse).
I also write in my thesis that “ While it makes sense to want to harden against the threats of uncertain futures, rigid bodies hit water harder. To navigate these treacherous waters, Alexis Pauline Gumbs develops emergent strategies of survival that she calls “dorsal fin practices” (2020) by thinking with marine mammals as kin who have already been forced to adapt to the ever-changing ocean tides and temperatures due to climate change. Their strategies of survival are learning to adapt by gliding, changing, flowing, and moving” (Law, 2024, page 83).
My hope is that climate forums can hold more space for youth, and also with the very real and felt emotional consequences of climate inaction and delay. For the sake of all of us to develop better strategies for resilience and “dorsal fin practices.” I hope that the next forum will be braver and spotlight youth as drivers of the conversation, where we can talk together in dialogue - and maybe even sit in a circle.