EDITOR’S NOTE: In this collaboration between Mountain Journal and “Grounding,” an independent production of Montana Public Radio’s arts and culture team, we’re examining how climate change is affecting our landscapes, our brains and our lives. The second season of “Grounding” is exploring the idea of dissonance — the psychological discomfort of reconciling the climate crisis with our daily lives — and is talking to experts from the Greater Yellowstone and beyond to help listeners put words to what they’re experiencing. Through its “Faces of Climate” series, Mountain Journal is giving readers a closer profile of these experts and their work in navigating climate change.
Listen to “Grounding” on Montana Public Radio for more on climate change and mental health, and find the “Faces of Climate” profiles of the experts from “Grounding” on Mountain Journal, along with other “faces” doing good work in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Peter McDonough is a self-described climate nerd.
To him, that means despite the facts and negativity that often follows a career teaching the effects of climate change to college students, he loves the complexity and nuance the topic presents.
McDonough didn’t grow up tuned into climate conversations, necessarily, or with an informed perspective of how climate change intersects with mental health. He saw Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth when it was released in 2006 and thought, with such a public audience, someone would do something about it.
“I was so naive then,” McDonough, now 39, said.
In 2021, McDonough became the director of the University of Montana’s Climate Change Studies program, the first in the nation when it debuted in 2009. He’s taught a variety of courses within the program, including an introduction to climate change course, where he explains scientific topics like weather, climate and the anthropocene to his students.
“You’re going to see a normal year now and then. But what you’ve seen is way more extremes than anything your parents grew up with.”
peter mcdonough, director, Climate Change Studies, University of Montana
But McDonough also incorporates emotional elements, like considering the impacts discussing a changing climate daily has on a person’s mental health. He gives students space within his classes to decide what role they can play to counter the shifting climate, whether that’s by assigned action projects or making time for class discussions about how religion and climate change intersect.
McDonough instructs a wide range of ages. Some are typical 18-22-year-old undergrads, but many are older, nontraditional students who add insight by explaining how they remember Montana 20, 30 or 40 years ago.
A blow comes to more traditional college-aged students when McDonough tells them they’ve never known a climate not impacted by humans.
Like McDonough, some of the nontraditional students have experienced the holocene, a roughly 12,000-year period of relative normality. There’s debate regarding when and if that age ended, but McDonough and others peg 1989 as the last year before humanity moved into the anthropocene, or an age defined by human change.
“You’ve seen a normal year,” McDonough said. “Because, again, climate fluctuates year to year. You’re going to see a normal year now and then. But what you’ve seen is way more extremes than anything your parents grew up with. And the room gets very quiet when they realize they have literally not even seen the epochal age of human civilization. They now live in an age when they are the dominant force.”
That’s a lot for anyone to grapple with, McDonough said. He and his partner have a son who is just over a year old. A big part of their conversation around having kids centered on climate, and whether it was a responsible choice to bring a child into the world. McDonough said he lacked the words to describe his decision until one of his students from the Blackfeet Tribe explained how their people approached the concept. The class was discussing hope when the student said that in Blackfeet tradition, having children is a version of hope.
“It’s a way of saying the future is unwritten yet. This child’s going to write it, and I’m going to help it,” McDonough said, quoting his student.
Hope isn’t McDonough’s favorite word. It’s often too passive, he says, or implies success in a way that’s unimaginable right now. “Resolve” feels better to him as a term to place around confronting climate change.
“The better the work that we put in, the better this future will be,” he said. “You’re facing a crisis. What do you have to do other than respond to the crisis?”
Three tips from Peter McDonough:
How do we protect our mental health living within the climate crisis?
- Focus on what is right in front of you. It’s easy to feel like the weight of the climate crisis is on your shoulders, that you need to eliminate plastic in your town and fix the U.N. accords and shake deniers by the lapels and, and, and … But burning yourself out trying to carry it all will make you less effective in the moments that matter. Do the next easiest thing.
- Go together. The stronger the community of climate-minded and climate-curious people around you, the more support you will have and be when things get hard. Being surrounded by people who care makes every part of the climate crisis more personally manageable and makes you more effective.
- Forgive yourself. You did not cause this; it’s not your fault (channel your inner Robin Williams to your inner Matt Damon). The problem was here before you; it will be here long after you.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article referred to McDonough’s partner as his wife. The text above has been corrected to reflect they are not married.
