Over the past few weeks, devastating floods have churned through swaths of central and Eastern Europe, while wildfires have swept through Portugal. With headlines like this becoming commonplace, eco-anxiety is the only natural, healthy, response for many of us. However, over time it can lead to feelings of despair, hopelessness and inertia.

By labelling it as “anxiety” we risk making this collective, global problem an individual one, but as mental health researcher Emma Lawrance’s extensive interviews can attest, eco-anxiety may also hold the key to spurring action. This week, we also have an interview of our own with Dr Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, vice-chair of the IPCC, who offers advice on how to keep a cool head in the face of climate breakdown.

We’re all (rightly) anxious about the state of the climate’s present and future, but have you ever wondered what the weather was like on this day 5,000 years ago? Researchers at the Universities of Barcelona and A Coruña have, and they took us on an eye-opening tour through the various ways of measuring 2.6 million years of climate history, including ice, trees, corals and the seabed. Amazingly, some of these methods can pinpoint temperature changes to one specific year – or even a particular season – millennia ago.

It’s not just the climate making us anxious, your job can also change your personality. Selma Kadic-Maglajlic’s recent research has conclusively found that salespeople are far more likely to suffer from neuroticism. She suggests that employers need to treat these mental health risks the same as physical risks – just as construction sites are inspected for health and safety, salespeople should be monitored for changes in their mental health.

Announcing the new lineup at the newly-minted European Commission, president Ursula von der Leyen has confirmed that the bloc is to have its first ever defence commissioner. But does it really need one? There’s an argument to be made that Brussels is not serving its own interests by focusing so obsessively on hard power.