Photograph by Zoie Kasper / Kintzing
words by Gaea Cabico
As the COVID-19 pandemic dragged on and climate headlines grew heavier in 2022, climate activists Gianna Lum and Jon Kirsch found themselves burning out. Years of organizing climate campaigns and mobilizations had left them and their peers exhausted. “We needed to take a step back,” Lum said.
Lum and Kirsch knew something was missing from the climate movement, but weren’t sure how they fit in. So they did something simple in that pause: They started setting up tables in parks across New York City with signs that read “Free Coffee.” Strangers who stopped to chat shared the same refrains of climate anxiety, grief, and paralysis.
On a chilly November afternoon that same year, a dozen climate activists gathered in Kirsch’s Brooklyn living room—not to plan another action, but to talk about the emotional toll of the crisis and how to carry it together. That became the first meeting of Climate Café NYC, a space to process the climate crisis over a cup of coffee or tea and conversation. Since then, the gatherings have spilled out of Kirsch’s living room into cafés, bars, yoga studios, and, at times, even Zoom rooms.
Climate cafés are multiplying across the country, particularly in communities where the climate movement is active, as the weight of the climate crisis becomes harder to bear alone. These spaces are found in public libraries in Washington state and Illinois, at universities such as Duke, and in community hubs in New England and Monterey, California.
The idea for climate cafés first took root in Scotland in 2015, when environmentalist Jess Pepper wanted to create a more informal and accessible way to talk about climate issues in her community. The concept was loosely inspired by death cafés—gatherings where people come together to discuss mortality over food and drink.
In the United States, climate cafés began popping up around 2019 as the awareness of climate anxiety grew and the emotional toll of a warming planet became harder to ignore, said Rebecca Weston, co-president of Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, which supports these gatherings and trains facilitators. While not a substitute for professional mental health care, a climate café offers a space to sit with your emotions and connect with others who feel the same.
More than 40% of adults in the U.S. personally experienced the effects of climate change on their mental health, according to a poll released by the American Psychiatric Association in June this year. The survey also found that one-third of Americans worry about climate change every week.
“Sometimes we just need to pause and be able to feel what we’re feeling. Processing our feelings actually helps us become more clear about where our energy and action may actually be more useful.”
“If we don’t provide support and room to talk about that, people are going to shut down to the crisis,” Weston said. “They’re going to either burn out and no longer work in the movement, or they will avoid the really, really hard feelings that come up when we think about the climate crisis.”
What makes climate cafés unique from other support groups, Weston said, is that they do not avoid the anxiety the crisis brings. “Instead, we make room to express them.”
In climate cafés, people often unearth feelings like shame and helplessness. They might want to change but fear giving up certain comforts, or feel guilty about driving a car, or worry they have ruined their children’s future. By expressing these sentiments, people may realize they can tolerate those emotions—a breakthrough allowing them to “start stepping into the movement without a perfectionist or shaming lens,” Weston said.
While climate cafés don’t prescribe specific action steps, they often act as quiet catalysts for sustained engagement. Climate cafés help open space for people to decide how they want to take collective action, Weston said.
A typical climate café lasts about one to two hours and often starts with a short meditation. In the case of Climate Café NYC sessions, sometimes that means imagining themselves in their favorite spot on the planet, sitting under a tree and feeling the earth’s energy move through their body, or picturing that same place decades into the future.
After the meditation, participants introduce themselves, state what brought them there that day, and briefly reflect on what they felt during the exercise. Then come the guidelines for the session: The cafés are spaces for listening and reflection, not places to debate policies or strategize solutions.
The discussion usually begins with a simple question: What feelings do you associate with the climate crisis right now, and how are you dealing with them—or not? There are no good or bad feelings, Lum often reminds climate café participants. Subsequent questions depend on the week’s theme—sometimes fashion, food, or an issue tied to recent events. Conversations might end with a lighter prompt: What’s been bringing you a glimmer lately?
Some bring their own approach to climate cafés. Gayatri Sehgal, for instance, leads yoga climate cafés in Los Angeles, where mindfulness meets conversation to help people unpack emotions tied to political and ecological crises while finding grounding and connection. Amid the flood of marches and calls to action, it is easy to feel overwhelmed, they said.
“Overdoing it exacerbates our frustration, dread, and hopelessness,” Sehgal said. “Sometimes we just need to pause and be able to feel what we’re feeling. Processing our feelings actually helps us become more clear about where our energy and action may actually be more useful.”
“Some people almost view it as a support group, a safe space to come together, voice their thoughts and concerns about climate change and how their emotions are related to that.”
During the Los Angeles wildfires in January this year, Sehgal hosted what they called an “emergency” climate café aimed at helping participants process the trauma and anxiety gripping their city. “There was a woman who said it was helpful to come and listen to what others are seeing and feeling because [she] has been out of body the whole time and this helped ground [her] and realize it’s gonna be OK,” they recalled.
Some organizers are also bringing these spaces to their own neighborhoods. Sam Daniele founded a climate café in a politically conservative part of South Brooklyn to provide a venue for discussion. “Some people almost view it as a support group, a safe space to come together, voice their thoughts and concerns about climate change and how their emotions are related to that,” he said.
While climate cafés offer a place to help people process their emotions and find resilience, they have their limits. The very name tends to draw people “who are willing to accept that the climate crisis is real, who are already sort of trying to grapple with it, and therefore, are feeling quite consciously the emotions from it,” Weston of Climate Psychology Alliance of North America said.
It is a challenge organizers like Weston are still navigating. “How do we offer emotional resiliency support to people who might not identify with those terms, and what is lost and what is gained when we use the phrase ‘climate café’?” she said.
Funding, too, remains an obstacle. “It’s exceedingly difficult to get philanthropic support for this work,” Weston said. Sehgal hosts a café every two to three months, but would like to offer them more frequently if resources allowed. Climate Café NYC runs entirely on volunteer efforts and small member donations that cover basics like snacks and materials. The group also received a modest grant from the dating app Hinge, which supported their in-person events designed to foster connection among Gen Z.
Looking ahead, Lum hopes to help grassroots organizers start their own cafés, turning these spaces into hubs where people can share emotions, build community, and spark local climate action. After all, mental health and collective well-being are key to preventing burnout, Lum said, adding: “That’s the only way we can have a movement. We have to have people who are physically and mentally well and a sense of trust within the community.”
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How Climate Cafés Help Activists Cope With Anxiety and Burnout
