Leah Thomas watched a video of the ocean on fire and was filled with a "sense of hopelessness." "I remember just not wanting to move the next day... I just didn't want to get out of bed," recalled the 26-year-old founder of The Intersectional Environmentalist. "What do you do when the ocean's on fire? What do you do when a climate report comes out and suggests that we only have a couple more years to maybe reverse the impacts of climate change?" Climate anxiety is the "fear or worry about natural disasters and climate events like wildfires or flooding," said Melissa Dowd, a therapist at virtual mental health and primary care company PlushCare. Though climate anxiety is not a specific diagnosable condition, it is very real for the people who experience it. For young people especially, climate anxiety can also impact decision-making. For Thomas, climate was front-of-mind when she was determining where to live. For others, fear about the climate can impact whether to have kids and how to spend their money. Thomas hopes that others, especially those in older generations, will start to feel seriousness of the situation. 📷: Courtesy of Leah Thomas #climatechange #climateanxiety #environment #environmentalist