Exploring Climate Emotions in Canada’s Provincial North

Abstract

The mental and emotional dimensions of climate change are increasingly concerning as extreme events become more frequent and severe, ecosystem destruction advances, and people become more aware of climate impacts and injustices. Research on climate emotions has rapidly advanced over the last decade with growing evidence illustrating that climate emotions can impact health, shape climate action, and ought to be considered in climate change communication, education, and engagement. This paper explores, describes, and discusses climate emotions in the context of Canada’s Provincial North: a vast region characterized by a vulnerability to climate change, remoteness, political marginalization, diverse Indigenous populations, and economies/livelihoods tied to resource extraction. Using postal survey data collected in two Provincial North communities (Thunder Bay, Ontario, and Prince George, British Columbia; N = 627), we aim to (1) describe climate emotions experienced in the context of Canada’s Provincial North, including relationships among specific emotions; and (2) examine if socio-demographic variables (gender, age, and parenthood) show a relationship with climate emotions. Results show high levels of emotional response to climate change overall, with worry and frustration as those emotions reported by the highest percentage of participants. We also find significant difference in climate emotions between men and women. A methodological result was noted in the usefulness of the Climate Emotion Scale (CES), which showed high reliability and high inter-item correlation. A notable limitation of our data is its’ underrepresentation of Indigenous peoples. The findings contribute to a greater understanding of climate emotions with relevance to similar settings characterized by marginalization, vulnerability to climate change, urban islands within vast rural and remote landscapes, and economies and social identities tied to resource extraction. We discuss our findings in relation to the literature and outline future research directions and implications.

Complex dynamics of climate emotions among environmentally active Finnish and American young people

“…. Hyry, 2019;Galway and Beery, 2022), and generally, it is wellknown that emotion norms and feeling rules in societies often have gendered dimensions (for observations about this and climate emotions, see, e.g., Du Bray et al, 2019). There has been an extensive amount of research conducted to explore the development of ecological identities and the impact nature connectedness has on these identities.…”

Drivers of behaviors: How do city pilots shape residential energy-related emissions through perceptions?

“…Although complete information could not be obtained, survey research is increasingly deepening the understanding of residential low-carbon perceptions and behaviors (Yang et al, 2021 ). Researchers measured subjective factors such as psychological distance (Wang et al, 2019 ), emotional characteristics (Lehman et al, 2019 ; Galway and Beery, 2022 ), political orientation (Luo and Zhao, 2019 ; Gregersen et al, 2020 ), education level (Wang and Zhou, 2020 ), and social norms (Sörqvist and Langeborg, 2019 ). External environmental factors include climate experience (Bø and Wolff, 2020 ; Sambrook et al, 2021 ; Yang et al, 2021 ), local conditions (Cianconi et al, 2020 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ), and environmental management (Marshall et al, 2019 ), and so on.…”

“…These pressures generated by other individuals or society make individuals form their own judgments about whether they should do or not. Individual low-carbon perceptions and behaviors would be influenced by psychological distance (Wang et al, 2019 ), emotional characteristics (Lehman et al, 2019 ; Galway and Beery, 2022 ), political orientation (Luo and Zhao, 2019 ; Gregersen et al, 2020 ), education level (Wang and Zhou, 2020 ), and social norms (Sörqvist and Langeborg, 2019 ). In China, where the government dominates the narrative and policy agenda of every societal challenge, concerns about climate change are focused on the environment and health.…”

What Are the Impacts of Concern About Climate Change on the Emotional Dimensions of Parents’ Mental Health? A Literature Review

“…All but one study had been published in the last 7 years (2017-2023), and more than half (15) had been published during 2022 or 2023. Basic characteristics of included papers can be found in Table 1 [7,25,[28][29][30][31][32][33]35,46,[53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67].…”