Introduction: Emotions about a World in Crisis

The environmental crisis is intensifying in many ways, and a crucial part of this is anthropogenic global warming—the climate crisis (e.g., see Ripple et al. 2025). Scholars from a wide variety of disciplines are working with climate-related research. There is a growing interest towards emotions and other affective phenomena caused by the climate crisis, and climate (change) emotions research has lately developed into an interdisciplinary research field (Brosch and Sauter 2023; Pihkala 2022b). Climate emotions are interconnected with wellbeing, action tendencies, and ethical issues in a powerful but complex way (e.g., see Mosquera and Jylhä 2022; Alabak and Verduyn 2025). This makes them of interest to a wide variety of people, such as researchers, policymakers, educators, psychologists, communicators, philosophers, and religious leaders.

In the 2020s, the global situation has been characterized by multiple, interacting crises. The concept of polycrisis, coined in the 1990s by Edgar Morin and Anne-Brigette Kerne and recently popularized by Adam Tooze, has been increasingly used (Henig and Knight 2023; Rakowski et al. 2025). The polycrisis complicates discussions of climate emotions, as well as the broader topic of various eco-emotions. Emotions about the state of the world are evoked by complex phenomena related to many issues, such as militarization, disruptions in social order and politics, and migrations, all of which have connections to the climate crisis. There is not yet any widely accepted terminology for these emotions: “polycrisis emotions” is a working term used in this article, and some empirical studies have explored the topic (e.g., see Izydorczyk et al. 2025). There is a need to discuss the relationship between more particular climate emotions and the broader polycrisis emotions, along with exploration of various dynamics that are specific to climate emotions.

This article takes up that task. Dynamics of climate emotions are explored using a popular visualization, the Climate Emotions Wheel, as a focal point for discussion. The broader context of the polycrisis is discussed, but it is fully recognized that the topic needs further attention; this article aims to provide insights for future research. Special attention is given to religion, science, and the interaction between these—the field of science and religion. Scholars of religion and science have made some explorations of eco-emotions and climate emotions (e.g., see Pihkala 2018), but there is not yet much literature on the interconnections of eco-/climate emotions, religion, and science. This topic is also interesting for a broader audience, because religion, science, and their interplay can shape how people experience and evaluate emotions, including climate emotions.

The structure of the article is as follows. First, various kinds of eco-emotions and their relationships with climate emotions are briefly discussed. Then, emotion wheels and the Climate Emotions Wheel in particular are introduced. The next sections discuss religion, science, and (climate) emotions, and climate scientists are used as a case example of how science and climate emotions can powerfully interact. The context of the polycrisis is then briefly discussed further. The latter part of the article explores various dynamics of climate emotions by using the wheel as a focal point. Observations about the polycrisis situation, science, and religion are made along the way. It is hoped that this wide-ranging discussion will benefit a broad range of people interested in climate emotions, and several themes for further research are mentioned.

Emotions about Environmental Matters and Technology

Emotions about environmental issues are nowadays most commonly called “eco-emotions” (Voşki et al. 2023). In environmental writing, there have already been depictions of such emotions for decades, for example in texts by famous American conservationist Aldo Leopold (1949) in the 1940s. But the conceptualization of a genre of eco-emotions is relatively recent. Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht (2019) created a concept for ecological grief, solastalgia, in the early 2000s, and later in the 2010s, he wrote about an array of “Earth Emotions.” Others have used terms such as “environmental emotions” (Beran et al. 2025).

The objects of eco-emotions can be diverse. One fundamental trigger of eco-emotions is a local environmental change that evokes emotions because people have connections to the particular place and/or the living beings in it. Regional changes can also evoke emotions, as well as wider global environmental changes and threats. The latter phenomena are connected with psychological research about “macrosocial worries” (Wullenkord and Ojala 2023) and sociological research about how a changing world affects people (Brulle and Norgaard 2019). In the 2000s and especially since 2017, the psychological impacts of the global environmental crisis have been discussed with terminology of “eco-anxiety,” “climate anxiety,” and “eco-distress” (Pihkala 2024b). These terms describe complex phenomena that often include emotions but also other psychological states, such as stress, trauma, and anxiety states (Lawrance et al. 2022). Visible environmental changes and damage can cause strong emotions such as grief and anger when a beloved ecosystem is damaged (Pihkala 2024c), but invisible changes can also be psychologically significant and cause fear and anxiety because of uncertainty about how much they impact people and ecosystems (e.g., see the discussion in Marshall 2015).

The phenomenology of eco-emotions and climate emotions is thus complicated. Many factors shape people’s emotions and other psychological reactions. There can be various triggers and causes for emotions. Emotions can and often do fluctuate. And people may or may not be aware of these dynamics (Crandon et al. 2022; Hoggett 2019). Various kinds of eco-emotions can interact with each other: for example, global environmental worry can cause a person to be more concerned about local environmental changes, and vice versa (Pihkala 2022a).

Technology, which is so intimately connected with science, plays a crucial role in numerous environmental changes anas well as in many efforts to protect the environment and increase sustainability. It is thus often involved in experiences of eco-emotions, including climate emotions. The phenomenology is again complex. The same issue, such as building wind turbines to increase renewable energy, can cause different kinds of emotions in different people: some are excited and hope is generated, while others are sad about the local impacts to ecosystems or angry that the turbines are placed in an unjust way in relation to ownership of the land or cultural heritage (Lundheim and Löfström 2025). Climate emotions and eco-emotions can thus be in a kind of conflict for people: in the aforementioned example, a development—the wind turbines—can simultaneously evoke both climate hope and local ecological grief.

Identities and values naturally shape people’s eco-emotions and climate emotions (e.g., see Hulme 2009; Doherty et al. 2024). Strong environmental values and nature connectedness are generally related to stronger eco-emotions about local environmental changes and also affect climate emotions, but it should be noted that people with weak nature connectedness can still feel climate worry and anxiety because of the perceived threats to humans and human infrastructure (for research and discussions, see, e.g., Grénman et al. 2025; Wullenkord et al. 2024).

Climate Emotions Wheel

Emotion wheels have been used for a long time in psychology, and especially popular has been the one by psychologist Robert Plutchik (see Karimova 2017). Plutchik has been an influential emotion researcher and has advocated for categorizing eight primary emotions: anger, anticipation, joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust. He argues that other emotions can be derived from these, but as a whole, frameworks of basic or primary or universal emotions have been debated, and there have been various versions (Scarantino 2016).

Plutchik’s wheel has the aforementioned eight emotions in the middle. He also uses the image of an ice cream cone to depict relations between various intensities of emotion. Part of the scheme is to display relations between emotions by positioning them either close to each other or as opposite to each other. Emotions and counter-emotions are on opposite sides: for example, joy and sadness are opposite each other, as well as loathing and admiration. Plutchik uses physiological responses as the basis of this. Other emotion researchers and psychologists have proposed different models, and relations between emotions are a complex and continuously debated topic (e.g., see Semeraro et al. 2021).

Plutchik’s wheel was one of the inspirations for the Climate Emotions Wheel, but this one does not try to include spatial dynamics such as emotions and counter-emotions. The wheel is a visualization of many of the emotions people have been observed to feel in relation to anthropogenic climate change. A working group under the Climate Mental Health Network produced the wheel in 2023, using existing research on climate emotions as background. The work drew heavily from eco-emotion scholar Pihkala’s work (esp. Pihkala 2022b). The design has four segments and under them, twenty-three emotion words in total, as seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The Climate Emotions Wheel. Climate Mental Health Network. Kamenetz, Pihkala and working group 2023. Published by permission.

The structure of the wheel is discussed further later in this article, but it should be noted that there are many possible ways to categorize and thematize climate emotions. There is also great variation in the amount of research and public discussion that has so far been given to different climate emotions. Some emotions mentioned in the wheel, such as worry, anxiety, grief, and guilt, have been studied in many research projects (Ojala et al. 2021; Marczak et al. 2023), while others have only recently received more attention, such as anger (e.g., see Gregersen et al. 2023). Some phenomena can be characterized as both emotions and something else, such as attitudes or virtues: hope is an example of this (e.g., see Pihkala 2018). And there are many climate emotions not mentioned in the wheel (Pihkala 2024a).

It is impossible to estimate the full impact of online graphics that can be freely shared, but it can be said that the Climate Emotions Wheel has been popular. It has been used by educators, communications personnel, psychologists, environmental activists, and many other groups. People from various countries have been inspired to translate the wheel, and it is currently available in thirty-one languages. As an example of prominent public use, it has been visible in Times Square, New York, as part of advertisement space donated to climate matters by a company (Climate Mental Health Network 2023).

The observed benefits of emotion wheels are many. In psychology, there is rich research data about the importance of being able to name emotions (Barrett et al. 2016). Broadly, it helps in engaging more constructively with emotions. Naming emotions activates areas of the prefrontal cortex that enable more calm decision-making. Self-awareness and self-knowledge increase, which can bring many benefits. After recognizing emotions, people can consciously apply what they have learned about that particular emotion, or seek for more information. Communication with others becomes more feasible, and people can tell others what they are feeling, if necessary. Skill with recognizing emotions in oneself can lead to better skill with recognizing other people’s emotions and understanding them better. This is sometimes called affect labeling and/or emotional differentiation. The concepts of emotional granularity and emotional literacy are also connected to this (Smidt and Suvak 2015).

The Climate Emotions Wheel can be powerful in providing recognition and validation, and perhaps also witness. The existence of this kind of wheel signals public recognition of the emotional dimensions of climate change. People can feel validated by seeing the name of a climate emotion they are feeling in a published visual aid. The wheel bears witness to the wide range of climate emotions and gives them a certain right to exist by depicting them as common phenomena.

Religion, Science, and (Climate) Emotions

Study of religion and emotions is a thematic academic discipline (Corrigan 2007). Scholars and practitioners have been interested in many issues, such as emotions commonly experienced in religious practices, emotion norms and religion, and the possibility of categorizing certain particularly “religious emotions” (e.g., see Ferran 2019). It has been found that emotions are very significant in religion, but there is great variation in whether emotions are explicitly discussed in religious groups or just felt as part of spiritual life. Different religions and religious groups can emphasize different emotions as important or as a desired part of their social lives (e.g., see Roberts 2021). For example, there can be presuppositions that people will express guilt or gratitude at a given phase in a religious ritual. Religion can also include norms about the desired intensity of emotions (Emmons 2005).

In a parallel manner, there has been research on science and emotions, exploring issues such as the role of emotions in practicing science, emotion norms in scientific communities, and various views of the relationship between science and emotion in history (e.g., see Dror et al. 2016; Scarantino and de Sousa 2018). Overall, science has a complicated history in relation to emotion. There have been powerful strands in Western science that have emphasized the importance of keeping emotions at a distance from ways of making scientific research (e.g., see Barbalet 2002). However, many researchers have pointed out that this is neither completely possible nor even desirable. Emotions are present as motivations for research; for example, scientific discoveries are often linked with profound joy (Barbalet 2002). Scholars working on sociology of science and emotions have pointed out that “extant literature indicates that emotions pervade science as a practice, profession and social institution. Emotions support the ability to perceive and observe empirical patterns and relationships, and to make specific types of knowledge claims. They are elemental facets of scientists’ career evaluations and work life, and their influence on the research process informs and consequentially impacts the form and content of scientific knowledge” (Parker and Hackett 2014, 549).

Usually, scientific communities have strong implicit emotion norms that guide people not to show almost any emotion, especially “negative” ones, and I will return to this later. The interdisciplinary field of science and religion (or, religion and science) can also be analyzed in relation to emotions, but to my knowledge, there is not much research about this. Possible research questions include the role of emotions in interactions between science and religion, and emotions felt by practitioners of science and religion in their inquiries and activities. For example, gatherings of people interested in science and religion can include many emotions, such as joy meeting others interested in similar topics, envy about others who know more (this can also be “positive envy” in the form of admiration; see Lomas 2016), and warm feelings of togetherness.

Topics related to eco-emotions and climate emotions have been studied in relation to religion and to science, although these bodies of research are still quite limited in size. It is even more rare to find discussion about the three themes of eco-emotions, religion, and science, and this article at hand provides ideas for such studies.

I will introduce a few studies on religion and eco-emotions, as well as ones on science and eco-emotions. Several articles and essays discuss ecological grief (including climate grief) and religion/spirituality (e.g. Menning 2017; Malcolm 2020), as well as environmental guilt/shame and religion (e.g., see Fredericks 2014; Powell 2019). These two families of emotions, sadness and guilt, are prominent in Western religions such as Christianity and Judaism, which may explain why they have been discussed so much in relation to environmental matters and religion. Furthermore, there have been some empirical studies about eco- and climate emotions felt by religious people. For example, Finlay Malcolm (2025) studied eco-emotions felt by environmentally active Christians in the United Kingdom, and Johannes Cairns and Panu Pihkala (2024) studied Western Engaged Buddhists’ views about climate emotions. These empirical studies clearly found that the reservations in both Christianity and Buddhism about anger have affected views about climate anger. Activists had also made changes in their views because of what they learned in environmental action about the usefulness of constructive anger (see also Pihkala 2024d).

The Case Example of Climate Scientists and Climate Emotions

The case example of climate scientists and their climate emotions brings to the fore the complicated history and present situation of the relationship between science and emotion. Many climate scientists have, in recent years, criticized social norms in scientific communities that prevent them from expressing, and possibly even recognizing, their own their emotions. For example, Kimberly Nicholas (2021, 70–71) writes: “As a scientist, I was trained to be calm, rational, and objective, to focus on the facts . . . My dispassionate training has not prepared me for the increasingly frequent emotional crises of climate change.”

A number of both research articles and journalistic texts emphasize the heavy mental toll on climate scientists because of their work and the social dynamics around it (e.g., see Head and Harada 2017; Pihkala 2020). These problems include certain emotion norms and disenfranchised climate grief (for the concept, see Pihkala 2024c). These topics have been discussed, for example on the pages of Nature (Rodrigues 2024) and Nature Climate Change (Schipper et al. 2024). As a counter-movement to restrictions around emotional expression and emotional competence, both climate scientists themselves and climate-aware therapists have developed methods to emotionally engage, such as group discussions and self-help texts (e.g., see Calabria et al. 2024; Haddaway and Duggan 2023; Marvel 2025). The website and project Is This How You Feel? (Duggan et al. 2021), where climate scientists write open letters about their emotions, is one public example of this.

E. L. F. Schipper and colleagues (2024, 1011) argue that if the full spectrum of emotional responses by climate scientists is not taken seriously, this is actually bad science: “The current dogma requiring climate scientists to ignore emotions, especially those typically labelled as negative, such as worry, sadness, anxiety and even anger, contradicts the very basis of science, which strives to initially take all factors of any given equation into account. Indeed, worries about the future, expressed as emotions, may also stimulate scientific curiosity and lead to success in ongoing research.”

I am not aware of studies that provide in-depth analysis of how religion interacts with the climate emotions of climate scientists, but it is clear that these interactions do exist. One prominent figure to study would be the famous climate scientist and public advocate Katherine Hayhoe (2021), who speaks and writes openly about both her Christian faith and her many climate emotions. In the following section, observations about this general topic are made in relation to various emotion dynamics.

Climate Change, Emotions, and the Polycrisis

In the current situation, a number of interacting and overlapping crises evoke emotions and psychological distress in people. Naturally, the polycrisis is felt and experienced differently by different people in various socioeconomic situations and global contexts, but nobody who lives now is free from some impacts of the total crisis.

Psychological surveys have tried to find out the most pressing concerns for people, such as a study about distress in relation to climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine among the German population in the early 2020s. The authors make a very important point: “[S]imultaneous effects of these stressors are not yet understood, making it difficult to evaluate their relative contribution to the population burden and potential future manifestations in clinically significant psychiatric disorders” (Weierstall-Pust et al. 2022).

A question arises: Would it be important to explore and name “polycrisis emotions” and “polycrisis distress”? What emotions and combinations of emotions are particularly important for people living in various contexts amidst the polycrisis? This kind of exploration does not need to entail an attempt to name emotions and affective phenomena on behalf of others, but instead it can be descriptive and provide information for others to think about their emotions.

In my own experience, feelings of overwhelm are prominent among people in these times, as well as feelings of powerlessness. These are emotions that have featured strongly in surveys and interviews about climate emotions, but they are now often related to the polycrisis, and the climate crisis as an integral part of it. Many other emotions are evidently prominent and widespread too, such as anger about global leaders who wreak havoc and a disappointed disbelief in the downfall of democracy and ethics in global politics.

Several other dynamics around climate emotions and the polycrisis can be rather easily recognized. Climate anxiety can be about the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence and all the infrastructure and electricity it demands, and at the same time about wars that cause environmental damage and take political attention away from climate politics (for examples of this worry, see Kinney 2025; Bigger 2025). A special emotional dynamic amidst the intensifying polycrisis twists around the choice of actions. When so many crises are urgent, where does one put one’s limited resources for action? I have met climate-aware people who feel guilt because they are not able to devote as much time to climate action as before because other crises take so much attention. This is not the most traditional form of “climate guilt,” but it is related to the more general topic of guilt and the climate crisis.

Exploring Climate Emotions, Religion, and Science with the Wheel

In this section, the dynamics of climate emotions and their connections with religion and science are discussed with the Climate Emotions Wheel as a focal point. This discussion also draws from my own experiences of engaging with various audiences about the wheel, including people in religion and science gatherings. Given the spatial limits of this article, the discussion will be brief, and it is hoped it provides ideas for further research and practical engagement.

Many aspects of the design of the wheel lead directly towards certain fruitful questions for discussion. In my experience, these tend to emerge spontaneously from (Western) audiences. For example, at least half the time, somebody asks about the balance between negative and positive emotions in the wheel.

Many of the selected topics are major themes in emotion research and public discussions around emotion: ways of categorizing emotions, colors and emotions, emotional complexity and mixed emotions, the relationship between language and emotion, the relationship between positive and negative emotions, emotion norms and feeling rules, and objects and triggers of emotions.

A note related to practice: when working with the wheel with various audiences, I often explicitly discuss most of these themes in an effort to increase emotional literacy amidst the polycrisis. These themes can be used consciously for psychoeducation amidst various audiences, including religion and science gatherings, religious communities, and scientific institutions.

Concluding Reflections

In this interdisciplinary article, climate emotions have been discussed in the context of the polycrisis, with special attention to religion and science. Polycrisis emotions have been briefly explored, but further research is needed to study the various kinds of lived experience amidst the polycrisis.

The Climate Emotions Wheel has been used as a focal point for discussion of the dynamics of climate emotions. It is hoped that the wheel, related guides (e.g., see Pihkala 2024a), and this article could support in-depth engagement with climate emotions with various audiences, including communities and institutions related to religion and science. This article originates in the conference of the International Society for Science and Religion in Swindon, UK, in the summer 2025, where the wheel led to fascinating discussions.

Since emotion wheels have been found useful, should a special emotion wheel be developed for polycrisis emotions? This remains an open question, but for the time being, the Climate Emotions Wheel can also be used for discussions of polycrisis emotions. People could reflect on how the emotion words in it reflect polycrisis emotions and what emotion words might need to be added to capture some specific experiences of the polycrisis.

It has not been possible in this article to engage deeply with topics related to coping with climate emotions and emotion regulation. It should be mentioned that religious and spiritual practices can, at their best, engage with a wide range of (climate) emotions, and it would be important to continue to develop various kinds of methods for this, including rituals (e.g., see Clinebell 1996; Pihkala 2024d; Borovica et al. 2025). Contemplative practices can be helpful, such as mindfulness (Macaulay et al. 2025). Amidst a world in crisis, all kinds of institutions and methods are needed for the creative work of adaptation, mitigation, and transformation.

Acknowledgments

The author expresses thanks to the anonymous reviewers for excellent ideas about how to improve the manuscript. This article is loosely based on a plenary address at the International Society for Science and Religion conference in Swindon, UK, July 2025. While no funding was received especially for writing this article, the author expresses general thanks to the Kone Foundation and the Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation for supporting his eco-emotion research.

Competing Interests

The author declares that they have no competing interests.