The unbearable existence of uncertainty

On death, impermanence and how intolerance of uncertainty affects us in the climate crisis.

Welcome back to Climate Psyched, the newsletter where we explore all things psychological, behavioral and emotional related to the climate and ecosystem crises.

It’s been a summer of death and sadness. First, one of my mum’s oldest friends died, unexpectedly and many years too soon. Then, a dear friend’s mother died, after a year of cancer. Expected, and yet without enough time to prepare. Is there even such a thing as enough time to prepare for a parent’s death? Then, another dear friend’s father died. Out of the blue, with the reminder that death can strike at any instance and without warning.

All the while, my granddad was suffering through the final stages of cancer. A 91-year-old who one year ago was the youngest 90-year-old imaginable. After a life of being healthy and active, always taking care of others, he was struck by illness and spent his last weeks with family by his side and wonderful nurses caring for him. He drew his last breath as July was coming to an end.

When people you love die it becomes apparent how death affects life and how life is an organism that never seizes to change.

Death is the most inevitable event of everyone’s life, and yet the most torturous reminder of life’s unbearable impermanence. Of how everything in our lives is impermanent. How everything on this planet is. The only constant is change, and the only certainty we can truly have is that of the impermanence of everything’s existence. And yet, this impermanence seems to be one of the hardest things for us to live with. Impermanence inherently implicates uncertainty of what the future holds and how the future will unfold.

There are many theories of how death plays into our lives and affects our way of being, living and feeling. The climate crisis is closely tied to death and suffering. I mean, the main reason we’re fighting for a sustainable planet is to avoid death and suffering - and to secure a livable planet for all. One thing that makes the climate crisis hard, not just in terms of getting people to act, but also to endure living in it, is the great amount of uncertainty it entails.

In my clinical work, whether climate related or not, dealing with uncertainty is one of the most common themes that comes up, and one of hardest things people deal with. Much worry, anxiety and fear would cease to exist had we had certainty of how the future would unfold. Many people would probably prefer having certainty, even if it would mean pain, over the unbearable suffering of not knowing how things will turn out.

In this month’s post I’ve dug into the topic of uncertainty and its effect on climate related worry and engagement. A topic that perhaps leaves us with even more uncertainty.

Photo: Jakub Kriz

Situation

The climate crisis has always been surrounded by several dimensions of uncertainty. Research on causes of climate change has always, and still, leaves room for not fully knowing everything. In the 4^th IPCC Synthesis report, released as late as in in 2007 it still said

Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.7 It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica)

Likely and very likely, but not certain. Leaving room for future studies to change the current projections and estimations is an important part of research, but from the perspective of human perception it does create room for uncertainty: that things might be worse, but also that things might be better, than projected. (It should be noted that in the latest IPCC Synthesis report, released in 2023 they state that “Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming”)

From a behavioral perspective, there are several levels of uncertainty: we cannot say what exact behaviors lead to which exact consequences. Neither can we fully know exactly what effects different solutions will have. With billions of people carrying out billions of behaviors over time, and since a multitude of solutions on different levels are required to tackle the crisis, there will be uncertainty about exact causes and effects. It’s not an excuse not to act, but this uncertainty is a potential obstacle to motivate people to act, and something that we need to deal with.

There are many dimensions of climate uncertainty, but for now, let’s focus on how climate related uncertainty affects us emotionally. The uncertainty that triggers questions like “Will we be able to tackle the crisis?” “How much suffering will there be?” “What will life be like on a planet warmed by 2-3 degrees?”

Explanation

Living with uncertainty can be distressing, especially for those with a higher intolerance of uncertainty. Freeston and colleagues (2020) has been developing a model of uncertainty distress, tested in the context of the covid pandemic. They describe uncertainty distress as “the subjective negative emotions experienced in response to the as yet unknown aspects of a given situation”. This means that it’s the uncertainty itself that triggers negative emotions, even if there’s a possibility that the outcome will be positive. The “as yet unknown” aspects can be accompanied by a real, or perceived, threat, but uncertainty distress can also be experienced in situations where the likelihood of a negative outcome is very low or absent. It’s the uncertainty of not knowing that is distressing. An intolerance of uncertainty (IU).

Freeston and colleagues consider IU as a disposition or trait, characterized by the tendency to react emotionally, and sometimes behaviorally, aversive to situations where the outcome is yet unknown. Some people seem to dislike uncertainty more than others and are probably prone to worry and anxiety. Behaviorally, this intolerance of uncertainty can lead to people engaging in behaviors that are aimed at reducing the uncertainty, thus also reducing one’s uncomfortable emotions. For example: If your partner doesn’t come home at 6 o’clock as planned and the uncertainty of why is triggering worry that something bad has happened, an uncertainty reducing behavior can be to call or text your partner to ask why they’re late.

What happens if we try to avoid uncertainty?

According to Freeston and colleagues, people seem to tackle uncertainty the same way as they do other aversive situations: by trying to get rid of the negative emotions. In this case by trying to reduce the uncertainty in various ways, like calling your partner when they’re late. This behavioral pattern is common when dealing with worry and anxiety, whether it comes to ruminating on the uncertainty or trying to get reassurance to reduce it. The downside of this is that it rarely reduces the negative emotions long term, since there’s always a new situation offering uncertainty, ready to trigger worry and anxiety. Another downside is that habitual avoidance of situations that feel hard makes us less tolerant to those negative emotions, but also to have less faith in our own ability to deal with hard situations and emotions, have a lower self-efficacy and lower confidence in our problem-solving.  A high intolerance of uncertainty also means a high intolerance of the emotions triggered by uncertainty. The risk is that high IU makes us good at avoiding even important situations in life, without succeeding in avoiding worry and fear in the long run.

In CBT based psychological treatment of worry a key ingredient is to work with decreasing avoidance and reassurance behaviors by exposing oneself to potential risks and uncertainties whilst preventing the impulse to avoid or reassure - thus increasing one’s tolerance for staying in a state of uncertainty. “I did this scary thing, and the worst didn’t happen. I survived and maybe even grew some faith in my own abilities.”

The climate crisis needs long lasting action

When it comes to tackling the climate crisis and getting people engaged, we preferably would need for people to take action that:

1.     Makes a difference

2.     Lasts over time

3.     Makes them feel more resilient and capable

4.     Makes them feel supported

Managing climate related worry by avoidance risks leading to passivity. But how does intolerance of uncertainty play into climate related worry?

Intolerance of uncertainty and climate worry

IU is established as a dispositional trait, meaning that some people just seem to generally be more intolerant of not yet knowing how situations will turn out. It also seems like people with high IU generally perceive uncertain situations as more threatening and are more likely to experience worry and anxiety. Climate worry on the other hand is very closely tied to a specific issue, i.e. the climate crisis, albeit a crisis that has many different facets and things to worry about.

The research literature that explores the association between IU and climate worry is thin to say the least, apart from one recent study by Goldwert and colleagues (2023). In the study, using a Florida based sample, they examined effects of climate anxiety and IU on three outcomes: climate-related distress, support for climate change policies and behavioral engagement. Participants completed an online survey followed by watching a video describing climate change consequences. After watching the video, they completed measures on the three outcomes of interest. Authors expected that participants with high IU would be more likely to support climate policies, due to hope that climate policy can reduce uncertainties caused by climate change.

The only sociodemographic that had a significant impact of the result was political ideology. Liberal political ideology was associated with greater distress after having watched the climate video, as was higher levels of climate anxiety and IU.

While climate anxiety predicted post-video distress, it did not significantly predict policy support or behavioral engagement. Perhaps unexpectedly, IU predicted higher pro-environmental behavioral engagement. This can be interpreted as people high in IU seeing pro-environmental engagement as uncertainty-reducing, perhaps more so than avoiding the subject altogether.

Does this mean that we should encourage intolerance of uncertainty amongst people? Not necessarily. This first study might give us a hint that pro-environmental engagement can function as uncertainty-reducing, but it doesn’t answer any questions about whether this engagement is long lasting, or if it’s compatible with what I mentioned above, in making people feel resilient, capable and supported.

Climate anxiety didn’t, in this study, predict pro-environmental engagement, which differs from results from other studies. It could potentially be that higher levels of climate anxiety has a distressing and paralyzing effect, leading to avoidance rather than engagement. But in the name of practicing staying with the uncertainty: we don’t really know, and more research is needed.

Intolerance of uncertainty and dealing with acute situations

When encountering problem situations or crisis, stress levels normally rise, which is generally an adaptive reaction. It’s a good thing that we react when bad things happen!
But a high intolerance of uncertainty seems related with inflexibility, which can also mean that in situations that require problem solving, or in acute crisis, inflexibility can prevent people from getting stuck on one solution, rather than testing different alternatives in a way flexible enough to make progress. I’ve previously written about how hope seems related to the ability to keep parallel possible solutions and pathways in mind.

The research literature on this very thin, and it’s hard to draw any real conclusions, but a potential hypothesis that might be worth exploring further is whether a high intolerance of uncertainty might increase pro-environmental engagement, as an uncertainty-reducing action, but decrease the flexibility that’s important to be able to both nurture hope and problem-solve difficult situations caused by the climate crisis.

Action

Apart from hoping that researchers keep exploring the role that intolerance of uncertainty plays in getting people engaged in climate action and dealing with climate related worry, I think that it’s good to circle back to the question of how to get many people to take action that:

1. Makes a difference

2. Lasts over time

3. Makes them feel more resilient and capable

4. Makes them feel supported

In order to answer those question, it might be good to reflect on our own relation to and tolerance of uncertainty. And for now to bear with the fact that there’s much we yet don’t know about the role of intolerance of uncertainty in the climate crisis.

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See you in a month!