After a long day, there’s a certain comfort in unwinding, turning in early, and drifting into dreams — where paradise awaits, familiar voices return, and even a fleeting crush might appear without consequence. But dreams can just as easily turn dark: monsters, killer clowns, and faceless pursuers often gatecrash the night. And now, a new specter has joined them — the creeping, inescapable terror of climate change. Why are we dreaming about climate change, and why do these groups of people dream about it more? While scientists don’t know for sure what causes dreams, they suggest dreams may help us strengthen our memory, express desires, or manage strong emotions like fear. People dream about frightening social changes, like potential world wars, 9/11, or COVID-19. If a “goal” of a dream is to process fear, that may explain the demographic differences, because the previously mentioned who dream most about it — young people, people of color, and those in the West Census region — are more vulnerable to climate change. While it’s impossible to say exactly how much dreams cause such “eco-anxiety” or vice versa, we know that generally, mental health and sleep have a bidirectional relationship. This means that mental health problems can worsen sleep problems, worsening mental health problems, creating a vicious cycle. Such impacts are especially pronounced for people who have witnessed natural disasters or continue to live in vulnerable environments. In Louisiana, the most impacted U.S. state by extreme weather disasters in nearly fifty years, residents may develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The ongoing threat of another disaster can heighten hypervigilance, which often leads to insomnia and nightmares. She claims that, among all the climate-related dreams she’s heard about, many reflected fear — but in others, people were trying to talk to loved ones about climate change, or devise solutions. By discussing our climate-related dreams with each other, we can feel the urgency of the situation, have sympathy for others, and confront our worst fears about climate change before they become a reality. Although Martha Crawford acknowledges the mental strain of climate dreams, she also believes they may inspire people to take action. Some of her earliest climate dreams included hurling a global warming textbook behind her couch, and failing a course on the same subject because she wasn’t paying attention. While she was no climate denier in real life, the dreams convinced her that she should do more to save our planet.
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