Generation Dread

Not exactly the book I want, but the book I needed to read.

I have an anxiety disorder, and while my own climate anxiety, or ecological distress is not near the unrealistic level of the author, she does hit some salient points in the first part of this book. It does seem exceptionally sensationalized (I have specialized in astronomy and astrophysics in college, so I am not a science-denier, but I am much more tempered in my logic) in the beginning, and while it serves to set the stage, I struggled to get into the book.

My climate change anxiety is probably at a moderate level, but as someone with an anxiety disorder, I know how to cope with anxiety. We have more of it, and we learn how to deal with it.

The second part is much more targeted to helping with burn out, and focusing on action/selfcare. I appreciated it, but I would not necessarily recommend this book to anyone to read, because it feels very White-Lady Preachy, and exceptionally out of touch with reality, even though she herself admits that it holds white privilege. So a lot of the "fears" feels hysterical and sensational.

I'm a multiracial female in my 30's for reference.

Had I to read it over again, I'd skip the stuff in the front, because it doesn't honestly add anything to the conversation and feels more like setting up a foundation for the second part of the book. That could have been done in less than half the space it took up.

I wanted this book to be...well, more helpful. I find that reading something like this tends only to increase my eco-anxiety and this book had a laundry list of new reasons to be stressed within its pages. I find that everything on this topic encourages "feeling through" and facing rather than deflecting, but stops short of providing anything actionable in that regard. I still feel it was worth reading this title and it will, unfortunately, become only more relevant as time goes on.