07/31/2023

Climate Change is Impacting How We Dream

These dreams are often quite explicit and realistic

Martha Crawford started having climate change dreams about 11 or 12 years ago. Unlike many of her previously remembered dreams, these were not fragmented or nonsensical—they were "very explicit," she said. "They didn't require a lot of interpretation."

In one, she's reading a textbook about climate change and then throws it behind the back of her couch, pretending it doesn't exist. In another, she's sitting in a lecture given by a climate scientist. But the professor starts yelling at her for not paying attention, and she fails the course. The meaning was pretty clear, said Crawford, a licensed clinical social worker: "You're not paying attention, and you need to pay attention."

The dreams eventually inspired her to start the Climate Dreams Project in 2019, and since, she’s been facilitating a space where people can share climate dream anecdotes, mostly anonymously.

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.