By Leah Thayer COLORADO SPRINGS Climate despair may be spreading increasingly as the climate crisis looms heavy on the minds of Colorado College (CC) students. Also referred to as solastalgia, eco-despair, or eco-grief, this overwhelming feeling of worry and hopelessness is increasingly the emotional response to climate change. Students at CC gauge awareness of eco-grief as…
By: Olivia Dicks Colorado College students struggle with the grave impacts of climate change affecting many aspects of their lives. Many students are “scared for our kids and our grandkids,” as climate impact increases, said Avery Bakewell, a first-year CC student from Maine. Eco-grief is the term researchers are using to describe a feeling of…
By Emily Stamper It is common at Colorado College to see students reducing their carbon footprint in small and numerous ways. In Ben Khaghani and Ethan Hall’s eight-person, three story apartment on East campus, you will find a compost bin under the table that holds their homegrown sprouts, more skateboards than people and that arc…
By Sam Bower For a scientist who spent years investigating the environment, accelerated climate change has led to deep mental anguish and frustration. “Destroying the planet is the saddest thing in the world,” said Elizabeth Bower, who graduated from Smith College with a degree in environmental science in the 1980s. After college, she worked as…
By Mitchell Adams From being unable to play outside with friends as a child due to extreme heat in Botswana to losing the ability to jump off of a beloved pier on Lake Michigan because it became submerged due to lake rise, students at Colorado College have been grappling with the mental impacts of climate…
By Lili Weir The climate crisis is starting to affect people both physically and mentally. And according to a recent study, these effects often affect indigenous people more. Some on the Colorado College campus are suggesting indigenous practices could be a model for how to best deal with the mental health aspects of a changing…
By Johnna Geick The courtyard of the Colorado College campus is coated in lush green grass scattered plentifully with trees. Squirrels scamper around playfully and not a piece of litter is in sight. To the right is Tutt Library, running on a net-zero carbon energy system, and directly ahead is a purple-toned, midafternoon display of…
By Auguste Voss As reports on the rapid acceleration of climate change continue to dominate the headlines, young people are grappling with the realization that they’ve inherited a broken planet – and they aren’t happy about it. Reactions to rising temperatures vary, along with approaches to dealing with the problem. But some young people increasingly…
Whitton Feer The car whirred through the yellow aspens and the fragments of trees remaining from last year’s avalanche cycle. There was no cell service on Independence pass for podcasts or music, rendering the ride silent. My father Peter Feer, riding shotgun, turned to me, momentarily stealing my focus from the switchbacks. He told me…
By Carly Valerious The detrimental effects of climate change are not only destroying the planet, but causing grief. Ecological grief– eco grief– happens when you feel emotionally affected by the changes in the environment. A group of people so gripped with woe about environmental change formed a commune. They called it Zendik farm. “Anger at…
