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They’re often people of color, young, and from the Northeast.
We are living in the Age of the Big Yikes.
Climate change is widely accepted as both real and happening now. Many Americans hear news about global warming at least once a week and though projections aren’t as dire as they once were, they’re still extremely not great. Half of Americans have been “personally affected” by climate change, and of those, 54% say they have experienced a “reduced quality of life due to weather extremes,” a recent survey of 1,000 U.S. adults by Heatmap and Benenson Strategy Group found. Overall, two-thirds of Americans (65%) worry about what climate change will mean for them personally — a common anxiety that the Los Angeles Times has deemed “a normal response to an abnormal situation.”
A smaller but still substantial subset of Americans — around 15% — further self-identifies as having mental health problems stemming from the effects of climate change, including “anxiety and stress” about current and future events, PTSD, depression, substance abuse, and loneliness and isolation, the Heatmap Climate Poll shows. The distress, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, isn’t strongly determined by education level, income, or even ideology: A full quarter of those who say they have mental health problems due to climate change are Republicans (25%, compared to 31% of Democrats and 34% of independents).
The effects of climate change on mental health have historically been studied with a focus on young people, and it’s true that younger adults in Heatmap’s survey were also the ones more likely to describe mental health problems from climate effects. But what else can we learn about those who suffer mental and emotional ramifications from our changing world?
Unsurprisingly, and consistent with prior research, young adults are overwhelmingly the ones most anxious about climate change. Nearly half of 18-to-34-year-olds who’ve experienced climate change firsthand described having mental health problems as a result — a response that was much smaller in the 65+ population (10%). However, of that small number of people in the 65+ population who have reported suffering mental health problems due to climate change, there was a universal (100%) experience of having “anxiety and stress over future effects of climate change,” Heatmap found. Ninety percent also had anxiety and stress over the current effects.
Among young people who self-reported having mental health issues around climate change, “stress and anxiety” about current (69%) and future (66%) climate events was the most often cited mental health impact. Over half also cited depression (53%) and loneliness and isolation (46%).
Despite the “unbearable whiteness” of the conversation around climate anxiety, Heatmap’s polling was consistent with earlier surveys that found people of color are more likely to be alarmed about global warming than white people. White Americans were actually the least likely to report having experienced climate change-related mental health problems, at 28%, compared to African-Americans and Hispanics (36% each) and Asian American and Pacific Islanders (33%). Though white Americans reported the highest instances of depression (60% compared to 36% among all people of color), minority groups lead self-reports of anxiety and stress over the present (71% to white Americans’ 64%); anxiety and stress over the future (65% to white Americans’ 61%); and loneliness and isolation (45% to white Americans’ 35%).
That result isn’t as surprising when you look at who has been personally affected by climate change: just 44% of white people say they have been, compared to more than half of African-Americans (55%), one in six Hispanics (60%), and three-quarters of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (75%). Of the people who said climate change caused them mental health problems, the lowest rate (28%) was among white Americans.
Heatmap also asked all the respondents if climate change makes them worried about their children’s future. Though this question included answers from non-parents and people planning never to have children (and thus could be skewed by the fact that white respondents were also the least likely to have children under 18 living at home), 78% of people of color voiced general concerns about the future of their children due to climate change compared to 64% of white Americans.
Particularly of note was that nearly all (94%) of Asian American and Pacific Islanders described themselves as worrying about their children’s future due to climate change, despite having roughly the same number of children living at home as white Americans (34% to white American's 31%). There were also high levels of concern among Hispanics, at 81%, and African-Americans, at 70%, though those respondents were somewhat more likely to be parents or guardians than white Americans.
Mothers were significantly more likely to suffer from the mental health effects of climate change (49%) compared to dads (33%).
Fathers, on the other hand — and hilariously — were likely to say they've experienced climate-related property damage (51% to moms’ 39%).
It might seem intuitive that people living under the wildfire-orange skies of California or on the eroding coastlines of Florida would be the most concerned about climate change, but that certainly isn’t the rule. The Northeastern United States is technically among the “safest” places in the country with regards to meteorological upheavals — just 11% of respondents in the region described themselves as having been “very affected” by climate change. Nevertheless, of the people self-reporting mental health problems related to climate, 40% were in the Northeast compared to 22% in the West.
This is especially notable because while people in the Northeast might have a reputation for being more high strung than other parts of the U.S., the region actually features the lowest levels of general anxiety, behind the Midwest, South, and West, according to
a pre-pandemic U.S. Census Bureau study. (The Northeast surpassed the Midwest by fall 2020, though that could potentially be attributed to the region being hard-hit by COVID-19).
The higher rate of self-reported mental health problems could be political: the Northeast is the most liberal region in the U.S., and residents are perhaps more inclined to trust scientific warnings about climate change and/or read news about the severity of the crisis, resulting in higher levels of concern.
It’s revealing to look at specifically what kinds of mental health problems Northeasterners describe, too. Most (82%) who were experiencing mental health problems specified having anxiety and stress from current climate change effects — a rate almost 10 points higher than the next-most-anxious region, the South.
“Depression” was the most commonly cited mental health impact in the West (66%) and Midwest (69%), the
Heatmap poll found. Suburbanites also specifically experienced “anxiety and stress” from current climate change in high numbers, at 74% compared to rural Americans’ 66% and urbanites’ 58%.
Climate-linked mental health problems more broadly occur at the highest rates in rural communities, which are also uniquely vulnerable to weather-related impacts. Among those who said they have mental health problems stemming from climate change, 36% lived in rural locations, compared to 29% in the suburbs and 27% in urban environments.
Anxiety only scratches the surface of the mental health issues that result from climate change, Heatmap also found.
Nearly a third of Americans (30%) who reported experiencing climate change said it resulted in mental health problems. While 63% of that group further specified that meant suffering from anxiety and stress, 49% also reported depression, 22% reported post-traumatic stress disorder, and 18% reported taking to coping mechanisms like substance abuse.
The fourth National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program published in 2018,
warns that these responses are normal and will continue to result from climate disasters going forward. People who experience a flood or the risk of flood, for example, “report higher levels of depression and anxiety, and these impacts can persist several years after the event.” Droughts commonly result in “increased use of alcohol and tobacco.” High temperatures can “lead to an increase in aggressive behaviors, including homicide.” Children displaced by climate-related disasters experience a “heavy burden” on their mental health. Separately, a 2018 study published in Nature predicted up to 40,000 additional suicides in the United States and Mexico by 2050 due to higher temperatures.
“Climate anxiety” (sometimes interchangeably called “eco-anxiety”) is not technically classified as a medical condition by the all-powerful DSM-5, the diagnostic manual used by mental health professionals in the United States — which makes sense, because “the last thing we want is to pathologize this moral emotion, which stems from an accurate understanding of the severity of our planetary health crisis,” Britt Wray writes in her 2022 book Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis. Many in the medical community agree; as one psychotherapist and researcher told the BBC on the subject in 2019, “I’d kind of wonder why somebody wasn’t feeling anxious.”
Within reason, a certain amount of climate anxiety can be a good thing. (It will perhaps be productive to track climate “worry” in the coming years to see if, or as, it changes as guarded climate optimism grows in popularity). But experiencing climate change can also produce mental health problems that, like physical health problems, need to be anticipated and treated as weather-related crises increase, intensify, and expand. That is particularly true as it pertains to underserved communities, whose mental health struggles already frequently go unrecognized or untreated.
The overriding takeaway, though, is that it is wrong to look at climate change as only a danger to property and physical safety, the two human impacts that dominate headlines. Even if just 15% of Americans who experience climate change personally end up with self-described mental health problems as a result, that would potentially mean almost 18 million Americans will be suffering from the mental effects of climate change by 2050.
As Gary Belkin, the former deputy health commissioner for New York City and founder of the Billion Minds Institute, wrote for Psychiatric News in 2021, “We are all psychologically unprepared to face the accelerating existential crisis of climate and ecological change that will further deepen other destructive fault lines in our society ... We must sound that alarm and put our own house in order.”
The Heatmap Climate Poll of 1,000 American adults was conducted via online panels by Benenson Strategy Group from Feb. 15 to 20, 2023. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.02 percentage points. You can read more about the topline results here.
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Though it might not be as comprehensive or as permanent as renewables advocates have feared, it’s also “just the beginning,” the congressman said.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team is drafting an executive order to “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast, working with the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, the congressman said in a press release from his office Monday afternoon.
“This executive order is just the beginning,” Van Drew said in a statement. “We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”
The announcement indicates that some in the anti-wind space are leaving open the possibility that Trump’s much-hyped offshore wind ban may be less sweeping than initially suggested.
In its press release, Van Drew’s office said the executive order would “lay the groundwork for permanent measures against the projects,” leaving the door open to only a temporary pause on permitting new projects. The congressman had recently told New Jersey reporters that he anticipates only a six-month moratorium on offshore wind.
The release also stated that the “proposed order” is “expected to be finalized within the first few months of the administration,” which is a far cry from Trump’s promise to stop projects on Day 1. If enacted, a pause would essentially halt all U.S. offshore wind development because the sought-after stretches of national coastline are entirely within federal waters.
Whether this is just caution from Van Drew’s people or a true moderation of Trump’s ambition we’ll soon find out. Inauguration Day is in less than a week.
Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as long as your colleagues on the ground due to flight time limitations, but the maximum scheduling allows — not to mention the added external pressures you’re also facing. Even the incoming president recently wondered aloud why the fires aren’t under control yet and insinuated that it’s your and your colleagues’ fault.
You’re on a sortie, getting ready for a particularly white-knuckle drop at a low altitude in poor visibility conditions when an object catches your eye outside the cockpit window: an authorized drone dangerously close to your wing.
Aerial firefighters don’t have to imagine this terrifying scenario; they’ve lived it. Last week, a drone punched a hole in the wing of a Québécois “Super Scooper” plane that had traveled down from Canada to fight the fires, grounding Palisades firefighting operations for an agonizing half-hour. Thirty minutes might not seem like much, but it is precious time lost when the Santa Ana winds have already curtailed aerial operations.
“I am shocked by what happened in Los Angeles with the drone,” Anna Lau, a forestry communication coordinator with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, told me. The Montana DNRC has also had to contend with unauthorized drones grounding its firefighting planes. “We’re following what’s going on very closely, and it’s shocking to us,” Lau went on. Leaving the skies clear so that firefighters can get on with their work “just seems like a no-brainer, especially when people are actively trying to tackle the situation at hand and fighting to save homes, property, and lives.”
Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
Although the Super Scooper collision was by far the most egregious case, according to authorities there have been at least 40 “incidents involving drones” in the airspace around L.A. since the fires started. (Notably, the Federal Aviation Administration has not granted any waivers for the air space around Palisades, meaning any drone images you see of the region, including on the news, were “probably shot illegally,” Intelligencer reports.) So far, law enforcement has arrested three people connected to drones flying near the L.A. fires, and the FBI is seeking information regarding the Super Scooper collision.
Such a problem is hardly isolated to these fires, though. The Forest Service reports that drones led to the suspension of or interfered with at least 172 fire responses between 2015 and 2020. Some people, including Mike Fraietta, an FAA-certified drone pilot and the founder of the drone-detection company Gargoyle Systems, believe the true number of interferences is much higher — closer to 400.
Law enforcement likes to say that unauthorized drone use falls into three buckets — clueless, criminal, or careless — and Fraietta was inclined to believe that it’s mostly the former in L.A. Hobbyists and other casual drone operators “don’t know the regulations or that this is a danger,” he said. “There’s a lot of ignorance.” To raise awareness, he suggested law enforcement and the media highlight the steep penalties for flying drones in wildfire no-fly zones, which is punishable by up to 12 months in prison or a fine of $75,000.
“What we’re seeing, particularly in California, is TikTok and Instagram influencers trying to get a shot and get likes,” Fraietta conjectured. In the case of the drone that hit the Super Scooper, it “might have been a case of citizen journalism, like, Well, I have the ability to get this shot and share what’s going on.”
Emergency management teams are waking up, too. Many technologies are on the horizon for drone detection, identification, and deflection, including Wi-Fi jamming, which was used to ground climate activists’ drones at Heathrow Airport in 2019. Jamming is less practical in an emergency situation like the one in L.A., though, where lives could be at stake if people can’t communicate.
Still, the fact of the matter is that firefighters waste precious time dealing with drones when there are far more pressing issues that need their attention. Lau, in Montana, described how even just a 12-minute interruption to firefighting efforts can put a community at risk. “The biggest public awareness message we put out is, ‘If you fly, we can’t,’” she said.
Fraietta, though, noted that drone technology could be used positively in the future, including on wildfire detection and monitoring, prescribed burns, and communicating with firefighters or victims on the ground.
“We don’t want to see this turn into the FAA saying, ‘Hey everyone, no more drones in the United States because of this incident,’” Fraietta said. “You don’t shut down I-95 because a few people are running drugs up and down it, right? Drones are going to be super beneficial to the country long term.”
But critically, in the case of a wildfire, such tools belong in the right hands — not the hands of your neighbor who got a DJI Mini 3 for Christmas. “Their one shot isn’t worth it,” Lau said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the Québécois firefighting planes are called Super Scoopers, not super soakers.
Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Friday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?
Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for some of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.
Read on for everything we know so far about how the fires started.
Six major fires started during the Santa Ana wind event last week:
Officials are investigating the cause of the fires and have not made any public statements yet. Early eyewitness accounts suggest that the Eaton Fire may have started at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison. So far, the company has maintained that an analysis of its equipment showed “no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire.” A Washington Post investigation found that the Palisades Fire could have risen from the remnants of a fire that burned on New Year’s Eve and reignited.
On Thursday morning, Edward Nordskog, a retired fire investigator from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told me it was unlikely they had even begun looking into the root of the biggest and most destructive of the fires in the Pacific Palisades. “They don't start an investigation until it's safe to go into the area where the fire started, and it just hasn't been safe until probably today,” he said.
It can take years to determine the cause of a fire. Investigators did not pinpoint the cause of the Thomas Fire until March 2019, more than two years after it started.
But Nordskog doesn’t think it will take very long this time. It’s easier to narrow down the possibilities for an urban fire because there are typically both witnesses and surveillance footage, he told me. He said the most common causes of wildfires in Los Angeles are power lines and those started by unhoused people. They can also be caused by sparks from vehicles or equipment.
At more than 40,000 acres burned total, these fires are unlikely to make the charts for the largest in California history. But because they are burning in urban, densely populated, and expensive areas, they could be some of the most devastating. With an estimated 9,000 structures damaged as of Friday morning, the Eaton and Palisades fires are likely to make the list for most destructive wildfire events in the state.
And they will certainly be at the top for costliest. The Palisades Fire has already been declared a likely contender for the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history. It has destroyed more than 5,000 structures in some of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Between that and the Eaton Fire, Accuweather estimates the damages could reach $57 billion.
While we don’t know the root causes of the ignitions, several factors came together to create perfect fire conditions in Southern California this week.
First, there’s the Santa Ana winds, an annual phenomenon in Southern California, when very dry, high-pressure air gets trapped in the Great Basin and begins escaping westward through mountain passes to lower-pressure areas along the coast. Most of the time, the wind in Los Angeles blows eastward from the ocean, but during a Santa Ana event, it changes direction, picking up speed as it rushes toward the sea.
Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told me that Santa Ana winds typically blow at maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour, while the winds this week hit upwards of 60 to 70 miles per hour. “More severe than is normal, but not unique,” he said. “We had similar severe winds in 2017 with the Thomas Fire.”
Second, Southern California is currently in the midst of extreme drought. Winter is typically a rainier season, but Los Angeles has seen less than half an inch of rain since July. That means that all the shrubland vegetation in the area is bone-dry. Again, Keeley said, this was not usual, but not unique. Some years are drier than others.
These fires were also not a question of fuel management, Keeley told me. “The fuels are not really the issue in these big fires. It's the extreme winds,” he said. “You can do prescription burning in chaparral and have essentially no impact on Santa Ana wind-driven fires.” As far as he can tell, based on information from CalFire, the Eaton Fire started on an urban street.
While it’s likely that climate change played a role in amplifying the drought, it’s hard to say how big a factor it was. Patrick Brown, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, published a long post on X outlining the factors contributing to the fires, including a chart of historic rainfall during the winter in Los Angeles that shows oscillations between wet and dry years over the past eight decades.
But climate change is expected to make dry years drier and wet years wetter, creating a “hydroclimate whiplash,” as Daniel Swain, a pre-eminent expert on climate change and weather in California puts it. In a thread on Bluesky, Swain wrote that “in 2024, Southern California experienced an exceptional episode of wet-to-dry hydroclimate whiplash.” Last year’s rainy winter fostered abundant plant growth, and the proceeding dryness primed the vegetation for fire.
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Editor’s note: This story was last update on Monday, January 13, at 10:00 a.m. ET.