While climate change takes its toll on Idaho, cure climate anxiety by taking action

The hottest July on record in Boise, unrelenting wildfire smoke for weeks and moderate to severe drought conditions across Idaho — climate change has moved from a distant abstraction into our daily lives.

And the worst part might be that it can creep from your backyard into your mind, making you feel anxious, depressed, or hopeless — like there’s nothing you can do about it.

Anxiety can lead to feelings of frustration, sadness and hopelessness. Maybe you just feel numb. It compounds the daily stressors that we already live with, and we can find ourselves in a state of anxious paralysis. What to do?

One way to calm climate anxiety is to take an earth-friendly action. Support local farmers. Weatherize your home. Plant a tree. Taking personal action is soothing because you start to feel powerful again, no longer helpless.

But do these personal actions actually help the earth? You might ask the same question about voting: I’m only one person. Will my vote make a difference? The answer is that both voting and fighting climate change count — more so if your actions are part of a collective movement. If large numbers of people take that same step, we can create real progress.

Sometimes personal action still feels futile, though, even when part of a larger collective. After all, we are trying to save an entire planet! That’s where curiosity comes in as a cure for climate anxiety. We’ve asked ourselves, “What can we do collectively to help keep the earth livable?” Investigation turns up some facts that few people know about.

For example, several bills with bipartisan appeal have been introduced in Congress that would set a strong price on carbon, thus cutting emissions sharply and quickly. When coupled with a cashback dividend, most families with low and middle incomes will come out financially ahead or break even.

These carbon pricing policies are supported by economists of all political stripes, 3,500 of whom — including 27 Nobel Laureates — signed an open letter in 2019 stating that a carbon tax is the most effective way to reduce greenhouse emissions at the scale and speed necessary to save us.

Here’s some good news: Both Idaho’s U.S. senators voted to support the amended INVEST in America Act. Besides fixing roads and bridges, this act earmarks funds to address the impact of climate change on infrastructure resilience: for example, projects on carbon capture, clean energy supply chains, and smart transportation.

In addition, Senator Crapo has co-introduced the Energy Sector Innovation Act with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, which Senator Risch co-sponsored. By helping rapidly scale and diversify new clean energy technologies, this legislation has been called an industry game-changer.

In a time when climate anxiety can be deflating, these bipartisan efforts are encouraging. However, turning good intentions into law isn’t easy. That’s why I’ve joined more than 20,000 concerned citizens in reaching out to our members of Congress, including Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, asking them to include a carbon price in the upcoming budget reconciliation bill.

I’ve also turned to our representatives to urge them to include carbon pricing in the House budget package. One of the best bills I’ve seen is HR 2307, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, which will reduce America’s carbon pollution by 50% by 2030: energyinnovationact.org.

Joining in these collective actions gives me hope — a welcome balm for growing anxiety in this shrinking window of time to save our planet.