Environmental guilt is often subtle . It might register as a flicker of pursed lips when tossing a to-go coffee cup in the garbage. It may manifest in a fleeting, faint press against your chest while youâre paused at a stoplight, watching car exhaust billow up and vanish into the atmosphere. Its suasive forces may be at work when you scroll past headlines heralding the latest version of too-familiar stories: âthreatened species continues to declineâ or âimpacts of climate change appearing faster than anticipated.â Environmental guilt lodges in the slumped shoulders of those who think I should be doing more and in nervous snickers over the âunseasonably warm weatherâ weâve been having of late. We may not even notice any bodily signs of environmental guilt , even though its rhetorical forces are present, influencing our beliefs and behaviors in imperceptible, indirect ways.
Environmental guilt , after all, is suffused throughout our communication landscape. One need not experience acute distress and remorse over environmental harm to be affected by rhetorics that invoke it. In grocery store aisles, via news reporting, through activist campaigns, and in a multitude of other contexts, we are routinely prompted to evaluate environmental wrongdoing, assess who is at fault, and weigh our capacity for response. From recycling reminders to Facebook posts denying climate change to street-corner canvassers soliciting your save-the-polar-bear-from-extinction signature, contemporary environmental discourses bid audiences to consider their individual culpability in relation to a densely collective problem. These rhetorics generate a wide array of somatic reactions and cognitive maneuvers. Cavalier dismissal of ecological problems, defensive self-exoneration, and studied incuriosityâfar from indicating a lack of engagement with environmental guilt âare often evidence of entanglement. Apathy in response to global warming frequently stems not from a deficit of awareness, as Kari Norgaard reveals in Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life , but from being all-too-aware of its significance. There are benefits, of course, to âavoiding the emotional and psychological entanglement and identity conflicts that may arise from knowing that one is doing âthe wrong thing,ââ she writes. 1 The rhetorical reach of environmental guilt is extensive, stretching well beyond the conscious experience of guilty feelings.
That said, conscious feelings of guilt related to environmental issues are pervasiveâand growing. National surveys suggest that âgreen guiltâ is on the rise, with more than one-third of US respondents saying they feel badly that âthey could and should be doing more to help preserve the environment.â 2 â[If] Iâm running late and I have to drive my car, I feel so bad about it,â one student confesses, âcause Iâm like, this is such a waste of gas ⊠itâs only me in the stupid little car to go five seconds down the road, I feel bad about it, but I have to get to class, soâŠâ 3 The growing sense of environmental guilt is attributable in part to the fact you can also experience it for inaction. âI feel guilt not just in environmental issues, like Iâm worsening climate change or different things,â a research participant admits, âbut also I feel mostly guilty for not participating or being active.â 4 Guilt is complex and contradictory: It can emerge not only from doing wrong but also from not doing right. It can arise for something you didnât do, perhaps out a sense of fear and confusion, as well as for something you didnât do, but wanted to. Guilt may be felt for something you think you did, even if you didnât. Conversely, you can be guilty of something and not feel guilty in the least. Such is guiltâs plasticity, which enables its prevalence in the emotional ecology of our everyday lives.
Environmental guilt may feel different from other forms of guilt, since it is commonly one root thread in a complex braid of ecological uneasiness, apprehension, and feelings of helplessness. Research shows these feelings are widespread. In 2017, the American Psychological Association released a report on âMental Health and Our Changing Climate,â citing the growing impact of climate collapse and biodiversity decline on our psychological health. The report notes that clinical and scholarly research âstress[es] the possible detrimental impact of guilt, as people contemplate the impact of their own behavior on future generations.â 5 Itâs not just adults who feel it. âSurveys conducted in different countries show that many young people are worried about climate change and rank the problem as the most important societal issue,â notes psychologist Maria Ojala. 6 The âeco-anxietyâ she observes in children and young adults coping with the knowledge of climate change, âis a worry mixed up with guilt.â 7 Environmental guilt is an intergenerational phenomenon.
The desire to absolve oneself of these disquieting feelings is, unsurprisingly, equally prevalent. Guides for easing âeco-guiltâ populate magazine columns with titles like âOffsetting Green Guiltâ and âEco-Guilt: Feeling Bad About Not Being Green.â 8 GuiltyGreenie.âcom offers visitors a ânon-judgmental and practical approach to change.â 9 The book Spit That Out! The Overly Informed Parentâs Guide to Raising Children in the Age of Environmental Guilt advises parents navigating an age replete with ethical dilemmas. âWe are bombarded with new and contradictory research concerning environmental toxins, long-term product effects, and the far-reaching impact of every item we purchase and decision we make,â it observes, adding, â[a]ll this information can feel like too much burden to handle.â 10 Environmental guilt can motivate reparative behavior, but it can also act as a paralytic, trapping you in a loop wherein your desire for constructive action confronts options that all involve perpetuating some form of ecological destructiveness. Each encounter with environmental rhetoric , whether implicit or explicit, functions as a reminder to situate yourself within a crisis that is global in scope and unprecedented in scale. Everywhere, we are mired in sticky issues of complicity.
Keystone Emotion of Environmental Communication
Contemporary environmental rhetorics have greatly expanded awareness of the ecological dilemmas weâre enmeshed in, all of which are interconnectedâmass extinction, the breakdown of our climate, and pervasive pollution. Given how overwhelming the problems seem and how high the stakes are for addressing them, itâs unsurprising that emotional turmoil and great uncertainty are spreading in breadth and gaining in depth. How we engage these forms of feeling has enormous impact on how we respond to ecological crisis. This book focuses on guilt as a pivotal factor for both the crisis and our emotional relations to it. The anemic response to ecological upheaval is due in large measure, I argue, to an inability to navigate novel forms of environmental guilt .
As a keystone emotion in contemporary environmental communication, guilt plays a critical role in the structure, circulation, and reception of environmental rhetorics because they are fundamentally mediated by ongoing ecological crisis. Even when not addressed explicitly, issues of culpability and responsibility resonate in the ambient of environmental rhetorics , influencing their interpretation and subsequent response. I adapt the concept of âkeystone speciesâ from ecological science to illuminate how guilt functions in relation to other emotions and behaviors, just as ecologists borrowed the term âkeystoneâ from architecture to demonstrate how critical species relate to their ecosystems. In an arch, the keystone is placed at the peak center, exerting pressure on other pieces in a way that aligns the entire structure. In ecological science, a keystone species performs a similar function: it applies substantial influence across an entire ecosystemâs structure and functioning, such as wolves do in Yellowstone National Park and elsewhere. As a keystone emotion for environmental communication, guilt exerts significant influence on how affective and rhetorical ecologies are organized and navigated. Who gets framed as culpable for environmental harm affects the flow of attention and resources; which actions...