Humanity Has Entered the "Traumacene"
The Climate-Ecosystem-Biodiversity Crisis is a Social and Psychological Crisis, and Addressing These Dimensions of Resilience Must Now Be a Top Global Priority
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Communities in Europe were recently caught off-guard by an unseasonable record-shattering heatwave that killed at least 18 people. Severe pre-monsoon droughts are affecting East Africa. Wildfires recently devastated parts of South America. Many Asian nations are experiencing record heatwaves and extreme flooding. This past March a tornado outbreak and severe storm system swept across the Central and Eastern U.S. causing over $1 billion in damages.
These and many other impacts occurring worldwide are taking place as global average surface temperatures have risen by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) above pre-industrial levels for three consecutive years. This is merely the early stage of what is coming. Due to ongoing human emissions, last month atmospheric carbon levels reach 432 parts per million, which is the highest in millions of years. In 2025 noted climate scientist Dr. James Hansen and his team projected that additional emissions added to the record atmospheric carbon will cause temperatures to rise to at least 2C above pre-industrial levels by the 2030s or soon thereafter.
Hotter temperatures are contributing to, and in turn being elevated by, the incessant degradation of ecological systems and biodiversity worldwide. Research has found that, since the 1970s, between 66% to 85% of the world’s forests, grasslands, wetlands, oceans, and monitored wildlife populations have significantly declined or been severely altered by human actions. For millennium ecological systems and species captured sunlight, recycled rainfall, and stored billions of tons of carbon that would otherwise have be released into the atmosphere. These critical functions are now considerably impaired.
We must all get our heads around the reality that humanity is experiencing a climate-ecosystem-biodiversity (C-E-B) crises that is destabilizing the core conditions that made our planet habitable for society as we know it.
These alterations are eroding the safeguards that cushion people from what previously were seen as the normal vicissitudes of life. A global epidemic of adverse social, psychological, emotional, and behavioral and related physical health issues has resulted.
We have entered a new era in human history I call the “Traumacene.” By this I mean we now live in a world of incessant externally generated harsh stresses that are increasingly interwoven with perilous traumatic events.
The Traumacene is Undermining Social and Psychological Health and Resilience
The social and psychological consequences of the Tramacene seen worldwide are profound. A new report on Climate and Social Health by a team of 22 scientists located all over the world describes many of the blows. They include rising injuries and loss of life, food and water shortages, damage and loss of shelter and physical and social infrastructure, lost livelihoods and financial struggles, involuntary migration, new illnesses and diseases, and many other troubles.
The researchers said these adversities are interacting with social, educational, economic, and other inequalities, as well as climate misinformation and denial, to increase social isolation, disrupt social connections, reduce social trust, decrease prosocial behaviors, amplify interpersonal conflicts, and in other ways increasingly fracturing communities and entire societies.
These and other social and psychological impacts will escalate as global temperatures rise toward 2C above preindustrial levels, making people worldwide more vulnerable to all types of hazards, and diminishing their health, safety, and wellbeing.
The Current Approach to Climate Adaptation Cannot Address These Issues
Climate adaptation has been the primary response to these adversities. Continual adaptation will be essential as the Traumacene unfolds. In its current form, however, the adaptation field will do little to enable effective adjustments.
One reason is that most adaptation programs focus primarily on strengthening external physical infrastructure. Even with better impact modeling, a disrupted atmospheric climate system will make it extremely difficult, and often impossible, to project the exact type, location, magnitude, and duration of the impacts of the C-E-B crisis.
My wife grew up near Asheville, North Carolina. It was once considered one of the most climate safe regions on the east coast. No one expected Hurricane Helene to move that far inland from the Atlantic Ocean in September of 2024 and devastate the area. No efforts to strengthen external physical resilience could have prevented the massive damage that occurred.
In addition, most climate adaptation initiates are designed to maintain existing conditions. However, the earth’s climate system has been destabilized and will increasingly change, often in previously unseen ways. This will make it impossible to maintain existing conditions. Building stronger flood barriers, for example, will often fail to prevent damage to nearby communities when a deluge caused by a record storm is far larger than what climate models projected.
Further, many adaptation initiatives are implemented by government, private, and non-profit organizations from the top-down. Professionals leading these efforts often do not have the knowledge of local ecological systems that residents do, which can reduce their effectiveness, and even harm ecosystems and biodiversity. Top-down adaptation programs can also treat people like resources to manage, marginalize those without economic and political power, and reinforce social, economic, and political inequalities.
As temperatures rise, these and other limitations of the existing approach to climate adaption will become very evident.
Mental Health and Social Services Also Cannot Address These Issues
Professional mental health and human services will remain important during the Traumacene -- where, when, and for whom they exist. However, in many communities and rural areas around the world -- including here in the U.S.--there are few or no certified providers. And there will never be enough to assist the billions of people who will dysregulated during the Traumacene.
In addition, about 50% of the public will not engage in these services due to fear of appearing weak, being stigmatized by others if they find out, conflicts with religious or spiritual beliefs, racism embedded in the systems, inability to pay, and other factors.
Further, most of the mental health and human service programs focus “downstream”-- they treat individuals only after they experience symptoms. They do not proactively work “upstream” to prevent or heal issues by helping the entire population strengthen their capacity for wellness and resilience during adversities.
Mental health and human service programs will remain important. But they cannot prevent or heal the scale and scope of social and psychological issues the Traumacene will produce.
A Top Global Priority Must Now Be to Strengthen the Human Social and Psychosocial Dimensions of Adaptation and Resilience
As temperatures rise toward 2C, in different times, ways, and magnitudes, everyone on the planet will be seriously stressed or traumatized. This is a population-level problem, and we must think and act through a population lens, not a siloed individual or isolated group approach.
Rather than assuming that trained professionals alone can address these issues, everyday people must be actively engaged where they live, work, and recreate in activities that buffer them from, and enable them to push back against, the impacts of the Traumacene.
As the research mentioned above stated, everywhere you look the adversities generated by the Traumacene are progressively rupturing social connections, weakening social trust, and eroding community cohesion.
In contrast, initiatives that build social connections, engage residents in providing mutual aid to each other, teach emotional self-regulation skills, and involve them in pro-social activities have been found to provide much needed emotional support, increase civic cooperation and trust, promote equitable resource sharing, and in other ways strengthen individual and collective wellness and resilience for all types of adversities.
This is why it should now be top priority worldwide to organize initiatives specifically focused on strengthening the social and psychological dimensions of adaptation and resilience, and to integrate climate mitigation and adaption into them. The most effective way to do this is to form Community-led Resilience Networks (CRNs).
CRNs are multi-sectoral groups composed of a wide and diverse array of individuals and organizations that residents consider “community champions.” Together, they use locally tailored versions of a public health approach to engage all youth and adults in activities that strengthen their capacity for wellness and resilience.
In addition to engaging residents in activities specifically designed to prevent and heal social and psychological issues, community-led resilience initiatives can involve residents in small and large actions to reduce local carbon emissions, and restore forests and other ecological systems and species. They can also engage residents in activities that enable effective adaptation to C-E-B crisis-generated impacts. Social connections and supports, increased trust and civic cooperation, the sharing of resources, and much more can result from participation in these undertakings.
When people see progress in these activities many will find powerful new sources of meaning, purpose, and hope in their lives. The sense of meaning and purpose can motivate them to do more to help others, restore nature, or participate in other pro-social activities.
Using this bottom-up approach, pervasive social and psychological issues can be prevented, and they can be healed when they do emerge. It can also mobilize effective local climate mitigation and adaptation. And it can create the political pressure from the ground-up needed to create the fundamental changes that can set society on a healthier, safer, more just and equitable, regenerative path.
Normal life is filled with stressors of many types. The Traumacene, however, is elevating the type, quantity, and duration of chronic severe stresses and acute traumas to never-before-seen levels. In response, we must expand beyond depending only on top-down professionally led programs and, from the bottom up, actively engage residents in their neighborhoods and communities in activities that build and sustain population-level wellness and resilience.
I encourage readers to consider joining a local resilience network or forming one if none exists in your community. Your involvement could very well be lifesaving.