How Climate Change Memes Help Us Understand Our Compassion Gap
By Nancy Nuñez and Emiliano Rodriguez Nuesch
Climate change can feel overwhelming — distant, huge, and sometimes just plain scary. It’s easy to feel numb or powerless when faced with melting ice caps, record-breaking heatwaves, or endless news about environmental disasters. But what if the memes flooding your social feed are actually helping us make sense of these feelings?
Why do we struggle emotionally to respond to big crises like climate change? Researchers call it things like “psychic numbing” or “compassion collapse” —terms for how our brains tend to shut down when problems feel too big or far away.
Surprisingly, internet memes — those viral images or videos that mix humor with commentary — can help break through the emotional barriers that make climate change feel distant or hopeless. By tapping into irony, absurdity, or shared frustration, they make a massive problem feel more relatable — and a little less paralyzing.
Let’s walk through five popular climate memes and see how they illustrate these ideas — and maybe inspire more action.
1. “This is fine” — When the world’s burning but we act like it’s normal
You know the one: a little dog calmly sitting while everything around him is on fire. This meme perfectly captures psychic numbing, where we see disaster happening but respond with passive acceptance.
With climate change, wildfires, floods, and storms feel like “the new normal.” The meme jokes about our collective denial, showing how we often ignore big threats until they hit close to home.
Normalizing disasters makes us less likely to act — but recognizing this pattern can help us break free from apathy.
2. “This is the hottest summer of my life.” / “This is the coldest summer of the rest of your life.”
This darkly funny meme plays with time and perspective. What feels extreme today may soon become the baseline. It’s a reminder that climate change isn’t future tense — it’s already reshaping our lives.
Humor helps us face frightening trends with honesty. And it pushes us to act before today’s extremes become tomorrow’s norms.
3. “What if I told you climate change doesn’t just affect the polar bears?”
This meme directly tackles compassion collapse — the idea that people care more about individual, relatable victims (like a single animal) than large-scale or abstract suffering. It points out that climate change is not a distant issue affecting just Arctic wildlife. It’s affecting us, right now.
To motivate action, we need to move beyond abstract images of melting ice and show the human side of the crisis — especially those already vulnerable.
4. “Climate change, happening now” vs. “Don’t worry, we’ll be net-zero by 2050”
This meme uses the iconic stuck ship to highlight the gap between promises and urgency. While governments and corporations talk about long-term goals, real damage is happening in real time.
People feel frustrated when large institutions delay action. Humor can help us voice that frustration — and fuel a call for accountability.
5. “A few years after global warming… Rose?”
This meme uses pop culture — specifically Titanic — to bring levity to a grim reality: rising sea levels and flooded cities. It plays on nostalgia while showing a surreal future that feels both funny and disturbing.
Pop culture references make big, complex ideas feel more personal and memorable.
6. “My plans / The current future”
This meme expresses the emotional whiplash many young people feel — wanting to care for nature while watching it burn. It’s a visual expression of eco-grief and disillusionment.
Memes can give voice to real emotional pain. That validation matters — and it can help turn grief into shared purpose.
Who’s Using Memes to Communicate Climate Truths?
In today’s digital age, understanding how memes shape our compassion is crucial.
Climate-focused organizations use humor, irony, and cultural references to make the climate crisis more emotionally accessible — especially for younger audiences. Whether it’s exposing greenwashing, expressing frustration at inaction, or promoting urgent climate justice, these memes aren’t just entertaining. They’re mobilizing.
Feeling inspired? Here’s how to get involved
If this article sparked something in you — a new awareness or a desire to do more — that’s exactly what these memes and ideas aim to do: move us from numbness to action.
There are many organizations working hard to fight climate change and protect our planet. Supporting or getting involved with groups like:
Greenpeace: A global environmental network using peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions. Get involved
Fridays for Future: A youth-led global climate strike movement inspired by Greta Thunberg, calling on leaders to take urgent climate action. Take action
Climate Justice Alliance: A coalition of frontline communities and organizations in the U.S. working for a just transition away from fossil fuels and toward sustainable local economies. Get involved
Whether it’s donating, volunteering, sharing their messages, or simply educating yourself and others — every action counts. And when we combine humor, emotion, and knowledge, we create a stronger, more compassionate response to one of the biggest challenges of our time.