Climate Action
Climate Dreams Show We Can’t Sleep On This Issue Anymore
November 6, 2025
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.
In a recent multi-country survey of more than 15,000 adults across 16 nations, about 54 percent reported recalling a dream at least once per week. The same research found that weekly nightmares rose from roughly 6.9 percent in 2019 to 11 percent in 2021—a sharp increase during the COVID-19 era that researchers associate with heightened stress, disrupted sleep, and global uncertainty.
In 2019, the same year climate activist Greta Thunberg declared that climate-denying politicians had “stolen [her] dreams” with their “empty words,” Martha Crawford, a clinical social worker and psychotherapist from New York and member of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, began documenting dreams about climate change and the extreme natural disasters that climate change causes. She retrieves these dreams from social media, and anyone willing to contact her about them, and writes them in a blog entitled: “The Climate Dreams Project: dreams of a global crisis.” Her Twitter (X) account has nearly a thousand posts, most of which are reblogs of other people describing their own climate-related dreams.
Subconscious Threat
These climate change dreams are disparate — some are realistic, while others are abstract, and some are full narrations, while others are vaguely remembered. In one tweet, someone posted about dreaming they were in a relationship with climate change, saying, “[H]e would destroy parts of the earth when [she] made him upset.” Others dreamed about swimming through floods to get to universities, reach a boat, or a “pleasing pop up shop in NYC.” The latest blog post, from March 2025, is about a user’s second dream of extreme heat.
Data suggests that they aren’t alone. A 2023 study from The Harris Poll found that 36% of Americans have dreamt about climate change at least once. They also found that men, Gen Z or millennials, people of color, the employed, and those living in the West Census Region of the U.S., as well as those who earn less than $50,000 in household income, are more likely to have these dreams. The most common emotions these dreams inspired were stress, fear, and hope.
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.
The Nature of Dreams
We often think of dreams as reflections of our inner thoughts and feelings, disconnected from the world around us — but science suggests our environment leaves its mark on our dreams too.
So, perhaps it is not surprising that after over thirty years of rising global temperatures, snow, ice, and hail are not appearing in our dreams as often, according to the American Psychological Association. Moreover, rising global temperatures and air pollution make sleep physically more difficult for some, and if this leads to sleep deprivation, this can trigger more nightmares (and potentially a whole host of other mental health problems).
PULL QUOTE: “We know that sleep deprivation and other sleep problems, like having an irregular sleep schedule, can be linked to a higher likelihood of having nightmares”- Sleep psychologist Alaina Tiani, PhD
Beyond temperature and pollution, the mind itself plays a powerful role: changes in mental health and emotional stress can ripple directly into the dreams we have. So our dreams are also sensitive to changes in our mental health. As early as 2020, 19% of surveyed children aged eight to sixteen years old had experienced “bad dreams” about climate change, with 73% claiming to be “worried” about the planet, and another 22% saying they were “very worried.”
We know that young people are increasingly overwhelmed with bad news stories about the climate crisis, from extreme weather events to geopolitical tensions, biodiversity loss to ecosystem collapse, to policy rollbacks. A 2023 APA report found widespread stress and trauma among youth due to climate threats, with 45% globally saying climate anxiety affects them daily.
But knowledge is power. This is why EARTHDAY.ORG is working to expand environmental literacy in K-12 schools and higher education, ensuring climate education and civic engagement are accessible to all students.
Sleep and Mental Health Are Connected
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.
Although researchers haven’t established a direct link between climate‑related PTSD and climate‑themed dreams, this idea aligns with what we know about PTSD more broadly, where trauma often resurfaces in nightmares and other dreams.
Windows To The Future
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.
PULLQUOTE: “Our dreams often show us that we’re embedded in an ongoing relationship with our habitat. Now, many of these dreams can strengthen people and help them find hope.”- Martha Crawford, “climate dreams” therapist
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.
You can support the adoption of climate education in all schools, to help ease student climate anxiety by signing the Climate Literacy Petition and urging global leaders at COP30 to integrate environmental education into curricula worldwide.
Another way to sleep soundly? Taking action to make a positive practical difference to our world. EARTHDAY.ORG initiative, CANOPY TREE PROJECT, aims to achieve this by planting millions of new trees. Consider supporting the project today, because every single day our activists can plant more we get closer to a world with fewer climate crisis nightmares.
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