Feeling anxious about climate change? You're not alone
With the Met Office's announcement that 2026's summer was the hottest summer on record and new terminology such as ‘noctalgia’, ‘climate refugee’ and ‘firewave’ being coined to describe the ever more challenging effects of climate change, many people are now reporting feeling paralysed by climate anxiety.
Eynsham Playing Fields in the drought this summer
The 2026 summer heat wave followed unprecedentedly long flooding in the winter, and the impact has brought climate anxiety to the fore in our local community too. We had to close our project for 3 weeks in January and February due to flooding and postpone community events in the summer due to heat. This is particularly stressful for our autistic participants who suffer significant stress if their routine is altered.
Unusually prolonged flooding at Long Mead Local Wildlife Site during winter 2025
This pressure can lead to a sense of resignation, denial and inaction, all of which are particularly damaging to the movement to combat and adapt to climate change as well as our collective mental health.
Feedback collected between January and July 2026, suggests that on average our participants felt happier having participated in plant propagation and meadow restoration activities on Long Mead than they did on arrival.
However at NRN we have hands-on evidence that engagement in climate action can help 'to maximise hope and minimise impacts on mental health'. Feedback from our participants show that coming together as a very diverse community to restore floodplain wildflower meadows and hand-propagate the rarest plants and seeing them establish in the landscape over time, goes a long way towards alleviating anxiety.
As Robbie one of our youth contributors puts it:
“Climate change is very much a running topic in everybody’s discussion these days and, I’ll be honest with you, it feels so very pessimistic, there’s no hope. [...] I often wish I could go to people doing this kind of stuff and say to them, ‘You’re not inspiring the public into action, you’re inspiring them into anxiety.’ That’s what I really love about this project, it’s a way out. Something that we can do that actually brings hope to people [...] It’s not just good for the environment, it is good for community.”
Robbie planting out Devils bit scabious in a restoration meadow
NRN youth members speak out
NRN members Sophie, Aoife, Angus and Hannah
So we have asked our younger network members to give voice to their concerns, put forward analysis of what is going wrong and share their strategies for the future with us here. In a special series of articles, they have risen to the challenge with enthusiasm and we share their responses here.
Robbie Cooke first came to us as part of his MSc in Conservation Ecology at Oxford Brookes. He and his mother Jacquie both joined the network in 2023 as they sought to relieve stress during a difficult time for the family. Since his mother passed away in 2025 Robbie has continued to regularly help with meadow restoration activities and has become one of our greatest advocates. In his article he looks at "the overbearing attitude of “doom and gloom” that pervades the environmentalist movement" and how "Long Mead...gave me a much-needed dose of optimism!" Read Robbie's article here.
In her article Hannah Shaw also examines reasons to hope for the future. Inspired by the sucess of NRN community restored meadows she notes that "It’s the resilience of restored meadows that is particularly encouraging to see - after 50 days without rain, it was noticeable to see just how quickly the land (...) returned to being green and lush, while the surrounding parched landscape lagged behind".
Hannah volunteered with us weekly throughout 2025 - 26 after deferring university for a year. Her keen interest in and support for all aspects of the network’s work for nature recovery is inspiring! Hannah is now studying a BSc in Ecology and Conservation at the University of Sussex but is keen to return to the network in her breaks from uni.
"Community can be sought out and created, but must be done with greater intentionality [in our time]" Hear from Ieuan Owen on the intersection between nature & community and how it applies to the NRN.
Ieuan first heard about the network in 2023 through our partners Peace Oak Association and GreenTEA. He subsequently attended an initial community meadows day - planting many snakeshead fritillaries in the Eynsham Playing Fields - and is now a regular at our monthly community days when home from university. He’s now studying Global Sustainable Development at the School of Social and Environmental Sustainability, University of Glasgow.
"You might be thinking that we are having to put up with the consequences of the industrial revolution (...) However the reality is that globally we are emitting much more today than during the industrial revolution." Discover the causes, challenges and some common misconceptions about climate change with Angus Gingell.
Angus volunteered with us at our plant propagation group over the course of 2025-26 and has since gone on to Loughborough University to study Computer Science.
"In order to understand why compassion often fails to translate into tangible climate action, we need to understand how our brains are wired against us". Follow Sophie Fleet as she takes a deep dive into the psychology of our responses to climate change and our sometimes seemingly irrational decision making.
Sophie joined the network after completing her A-Levels and was instrumental in helping us keep our hand propagated wildflowers alive during the summer drought of 2026. She is now studying Biological Natural Sciences at Cambridge University.
Louise Floyd joined our watering team in the summer of 2026 after graduating from university. She is now studying an MSc in Sustainable Food Systems at UWE in Bristol (University of the West of England). In her article Louise focuses on the changing nature, and meaning of community across the generations, "Community used to be much more limited by geography; now it can exist anywhere, including in online spaces. Nowadays, It feels like something you have to build, rather than automatically belong to."
Many thanks to Community Action Groups (CAG) Oxfordshire who provided funding for this project, supported by Oxfordshire County Council.