Navigating the Morally Distressing Storm

Abstract: There is growing attention to the emotional and mental health impacts of climate change. This has led to the proliferation of related concepts, including climate grief and anxiety, to describe different facets of this emotional response. However, these concepts tend to be agnostic to the sociopolitical and moral dimensions of climate change. Climate change has been described as a form of structural or slow violence, characterized by ongoing and deferred harms and the obfuscation of blame or responsibility. We extend and test a framework of climate moral distress, drawing on concepts from the healthcare literature, and test it with general public and environmental activist samples. Climate moral distress describes the negative emotions associated with repeated exposure to the pervasive moral harms posed by climate change coupled with the realization that one’s actions, alone, cannot ameliorate the harms. Moral distress is pervasive among environmental activists but less common among the general public. We find that although activists report greater personal and collective agency to address climate change, this does not result in lower climate moral distress. This suggests that the measurement tool adapted from the healthcare literature may not be sensitive enough to the key components of climate moral distress or that perceptions of agency are complex and nuanced. A better understanding of climate moral distress, including its determinants and impacts, could point to factors that increase resilience while also situating climate emotions within the moral dilemma posed by climate change.