Mindfulness and Ocean Conservation
When I was 18, I got the Chinese character for “water” tattooed on my wrist (shui). I had just returned from my first summer as a commercial salmon fisherman in Alaska. It was a life-changing experience.
Typical day on Alaska's Bering Sea.
Over three seasons, I commercially fished for salmon, crab, and other species – working and living at sea. I loved the movement of the ocean and soaked in the marine environment, thrilled by each new species I saw. I felt part of an old and respected tradition of men and women deeply connected to the waves and the life underneath. “The salt water got in my veins,” as they say.
This connection to marine life and ecosystems eventually led to a career in ocean conservation advocacy, which subsequently opened further doors into land conservation, clean energy policy, climate change activism and public speaking.
But paradoxically, my time on the ocean also left deep trauma that may make it impossible for me to ever return to long sea voyages. Near-death experiences while crabbing – including a crash that ripped our boat open on the remote island of Adak, Alaska – left their mark.
In 2005, I volunteered at a disaster relief shelter in Waveland, Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans got the flooding, but Waveland received winds above 115 miles per hour and storm surge over twenty feet, which nearly wiped the entire town off the map. What I saw, and the stories I heard from devastated residents coming to us for basic supplies, were heartbreaking.
One woman had tried to leave but someone had siphoned the gas out of her car’s tank. While the waters rose around her, she spent the night in her bathtub on the second floor, clinging to a mattress she pulled over herself in case the roof caved in.
Winter in Dutch Harbor.
This was the first time I saw the personal face of climate change and what it meant to live through a storm so powerful, one later proven made more intense by warming waters. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the last.
Will, age 21, supporting disaster relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina.
These two experiences shaped a first-hand account of the power of the ocean, the personal impact of climate change, and how small we humans are against the forces of nature. It instilled in me a deep connection, purpose, and drive to make a difference. It also instilled fear, trauma, and anxiety, in the face of nature’s ambiguity to individual human fate.
'Climate anxiety' isn’t just a buzzword. It’s something people are experiencing from real disasters, loss, and trauma. It’s something I’ve experienced. And it’s going to get worse as the climate continues to change.
But, I am also optimistic about our ability to make changes to ensure long-term societal resilience in the face of a changing climate. I have developed steps anyone can take to turn anxiety into action. Action and “making change” have been powerful antidotes to anxiety in my life. Mindfulness has been another. Let me start with the first.
Young people are increasingly experiencing climate anxiety. A 2021 first-of-its-kind survey of 10,000 young adults (ages 16 to 25) in ten countries, conducted by researchers at the University of Bath, NYU Langone Health, Stanford Medicine Center, and other institutions, found that 83 percent of respondents felt people have “failed to care for the planet,” 75 percent called the future “frightening,” 39 percent said they’re “hesitant to have children.” More than half of the young adults said they believed "humanity is doomed."
A sense of government betrayal was another important theme of this study. Respondents felt abandonment and moral injury related to the governmental response to climate change. Correlations were shown that indicated “climate anxiety and distress were significantly related to perceived inadequate government response and associated feelings of betrayal.”
Young people are worried about climate change, many feel hopeless to stop it, and they feel betrayed by those in charge who were supposed to protect them. These are all very important and separate points.
I’m a Millennial. As a recently-young-person, I get it. We are bombarded with alarmist news reports and social media. Even turning to entertainment doesn’t help. Television and movies depict a steady stream of what the end of the world via climate change or 1,000 other environmental disasters could look like. It’s exhausting.
Will at the UNFCCC COP22.
But I think there’s something else going on. Young people are seeing climate change first hand and that is shaping their views in a different way than generations before us. It’s not just on our phones. We are seeing it in our lives, all around us, all the time.
Again, the data support this. In 2021, nearly 1 in 3 Americans experienced a weather disaster. The summer of 2023 turned into a weird, orange hellscape for many of us as smoke from hundreds of out-of-control wildfires hundreds of miles away in Canada burned an area twice the size of Switzerland. Daily changes in wind patterns were the only reprieve from dangerous air quality for 120 million people from New England to the Midwest. What could be more personally apocalyptic than being threatened by the very air outside our windows?
While these threats affect everyone, younger generations experience and internalize these threats in a more direct, immediate way. It shapes how we think about our future in inherently different ways than older generations. For those of us who still have 50 or more years ahead, how do we cope?
I joined the Mind Body Ecology Institute (MBEI) as an advisor this year (2024) to explore a new path in my understanding of climate solutions. I am a policy wonk and have written and spoken at length about the institutional and policy changes needed to solve climate change. There are many changes society still needs to make, at every level of governance and economics, to ensure we create a sustainable and livable planet for future generations. But what if part of that journey is also about turning inward?
Washington, D.C. Climate March.
My journey to mindfulness started in Alaska but fully budded on political campaigns where I pushed myself to my limits and experienced panic attacks from the intense level of stress. From then on, I have strived to hone a daily practice of mindfulness meditation. The RAIN technique helps train my brain to handle unwanted intrusive thoughts – Recognize, Accept, Investigate, Non-attachment. I’ve found this to be a powerful tool against the darkest of nights where the flood of trauma, anxiety, and stress can seem overwhelming. It’s helped me to recover from near-death experiences, the devastation of catastrophic storms, the stress of daily life, and the anticipatory anxiety of an uncertain future in a radically changed climate.
This is not to say developing your own mindfulness practice should make you feel any less urgent about our immediate climate needs. But too much anxiety can lead to apathy or paralysis. Climate doomism is not helpful to any of the solutions we seek. We must build the space within us for empowerment.
The ocean can heal.
This is where MBEI is doing great work. Their online and in-person immersive nature-based programs, eco workshops, talks, and film screenings are dedicated to “exploring Earth care + self care practices to promote sustainable living and flourishing.” MBEI seeks to counter the Western notion of the self as separate from nature, with dominion over it. We are part of nature, and flourish with it.
This is also an effective climate advocacy message. We are not separate from nature so why do we keep talking about “Saving the Planet” and “the Climate Crisis”? We should talk about “Saving Us” and “the Humanity Crisis.” Any effective climate policy will work to safeguard both people and the planet for the long term.
I’ve explored these themes in my writings, podcast interviews, and a 2022 TEDx talk "The Future of Climate Change is Personal." I look forward to continuing to learn from MBEI what I can better understand about the inner transformation needed to hold two contradictory things in mind at once, i.e., how can we tackle issues much larger than ourselves, while also addressing challenges to our own mental health?
Returning to the second piece of the climate anxiety puzzle: action and “making change” – what does this look like? If young people feel betrayed by governmental responses to climate change, as the 2021 poll shows, then what are we going to do about it?
Anyone can enact change at the federal, local/community, and personal levels Let me share something from Elan Strait, who ran a campaign to pass a clean energy standard in Michigan.
Will's 2022 TEDx Talk in Washington, DC "The Future Of Climate Change is Personal." View here.
There were a small number of state legislators on the fence that [Elan’s] campaign needed to convince. These legislators held “coffee hours” in their district that anyone could attend and raise important issues. “The difference between three or five people coming to these coffee meetings and two of those people coming in talking about climate change, is how an issue like this can get over the finish line,” he told me. “These are local legislators who only need a few thousand votes to win their elections and they are very responsive to local input. And once a state like Michigan passes a clean energy standard, that can help tip the balance for whether or not the entire country can.”
The best thing anyone can do personally to make a difference on climate change in their community? “Just show up,” he said.
Due to Elan’s and many others’ efforts, in November of 2023, Michigan signed into state law a “Clean Energy & Climate Action Package,” which included a 100% clean energy standard. This means that by 2040, Michigan has committed to produce 100% of its energy from clean sources. There are also benchmarks and milestones along the way to assist in the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
There are currently twenty-four states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, with 100% clean energy goals/standards.
These and other positive stories of local climate action transforming communities often get lost in the national noise and punditry, even in the communities where they happen. This affects our perception of what we think is happening, often for the worse. Nihilism and apathy are obstacles we need to overcome if we are to correct our negative climate change course. It is important for us to learn and tell these stories to counter the popular opinion many have that “nothing has been done” on climate change. Telling stories of the vital work that has been done gives us hope. It keeps our positive vision for the future strong and gives us something tangible to work toward.
There is a clear path to regenerative sustainability within reach.
Of course, more work still needs to be done. We can recognize the work we still need to do, the increasing threat of climate change each year, and the progress we’ve already made all at the same time. We must, to keep ourselves motivated. Building the space for optimism is where mindfulness practices can help so much.
Turning back to ocean conservation, I am lucky to have found a career path that keeps me engaged in important environmental issues close to my heart. It seems that I am and forever will be inextricably connected to the ocean – as, in fact, all of us are. We live on an ocean planet, and it captures our collective imagination. The ocean captivates and terrifies me, it traumatizes, and it heals.
Not all of us need to work in the environmental or climate sectors. There is so much each of us can do to help prepare the world, our communities, and ourselves for what is needed in the face of a changing world. I hope we can learn to prioritize each of those three categories equally as we work toward solutions.
—
Will Hackman is a land and marine conservationist and climate advocate with more than 15 years’ experience in U.S. political campaigning, public policy process, NGO / non-profit leadership, and global environmental issue advocacy. Will is currently writing a book on how to radically reframe how we think, speak, and act on climate change solutions.
