12:00 PM 05/07/2019 | Energy
Michael Bastasch | Energy Editor
Can climate change worry hurt one’s mental health? That’s what CNN is claiming about “climate anxiety” and also linking to the election of President Donald Trump.
Trump’s “lack of political will” is making “climate anxiety” worse for many people, CNN reported Tuesday, citing experts. One professor claimed a student spent two hours crying after learning about global warming.
“With the Trump election, the change in my students, the sense of grief and fear and paralysis in the room, became palpable,” Wendy Petersen Boring, a gender studies professor at Willamette University, told CNN.
“Climate anxiety is real” and can be managed by taking part in a host of “green” fads, including going vegetarian with “meatless Mondays,” riding a bike to work and shopping with a reusable bag instead of a plastic one, CNN reported.
Whether doing any of these would work or not is up for debate, but linking climate change to mental illness is more common among mental health professionals. That’s not surprising given encouragement from the American Psychological Association (APA) and environmental activists to link climate change to people’s mental well-being.
A 69-page guide put out by the APA and environmental group ecoAmerica in 2017 urged mental health professionals to “mobilize climate change discussions” and “bring awareness to the interdependent relation of climate change and mental health.”
“They have the opportunity to help guide our communities on a path of progress through clean, healthy climate solutions,” reads the 2017 guide. (RELATED: Trump’s Waging An Uphill Battle Against The Regulatory Deep State. Here’s Who Is Winning)
While not used in the guide, the term “climate anxiety” has been used in the media to describe the supposed psychological toll of worrying about global warming. News stories on “climate anxiety” — also called “climate grief” — detail college students crying about dying coral reefs or people holding “climate change depression” sessions.
More notably, New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “young people” are questioning whether or not to have kids because of global warming
On one hand, young people today are bombarded with alarming headlines warning of an unlivable planet because of global warming. For example, reporters for months repeated the debunked warning of only “12 years left” to save the planet.
The United Nations made waves Monday in warning of an imminent ecological crisis and the accelerating collapse of the natural world — the same warnings the international body made in the 1980s.
CNN claimed higher temperatures “have led to more suicides and increased psychiatric hospitalization and have hurt our sleep.”
The APA wants psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to become climate activists. It’s a similar strategy taken by the Obama administration in 2015 when it asked medical doctors to “raise awareness” about global warming.
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Maybe what these paranoid individuals should do is take some basic science classes so they can see through the bull. Alarmists I talk to for the most part have no background to understand what they are just parroting back.
I don’t think they’re paranoid, I think they’re neurotic. They generally show signs of anxiety and depression, and rather than look inward and try to cope with it they need a boogeyman to eliminate the notion that they are deeply flawed individuals. Much of this is brought on through social media, where many neurotic individuals can find each other.
Some education in physical sciences would help eliminate climate change as the boogeyman, but trust me on this, they would just find something else to blame as the cause of their neurotic predisposition.
I believe they missed a specific word in the embolded statement…should read
Whether doing any of these would work or not is up for debate, but linking climate change fear to mental illness is more common among mental health professionals.
It is a new Phobia and should be treated as such.
It is irrational to fear a mildly warming climate with increased growing season lengths and vastly increased crop yields…like having a parlizing fear of breathing or darkness.
A “Paralizing Fear” of anything is an irrational fear as in Phobia
Does anyone know of any group representing psychologists and/or psychiatrists that hasn’t succumbed to climate alarmism? Or any individual practitioners who have the guts to stand up to this extraordinary delusion?
American Psychological Association, Australian Psychological Society, Climate Psychology Alliance (apparently UK based); all are fully on board, busy treating the victims of this poison with more of the same poison.
I have done a couple of interventions. Called in by clients of my construction-related consultancy to help with kids who are suffering from this alarmist abuse. Successfully so far.
I have credentials in tertiary teaching and mentoring in my professional field. I know a couple of medics who have credentials in psychology and are quietly supportive when no one else is listening, but would be risking censure and career damage if they went any further.
We all know proverbs like “the shoemaker’s children go barefoot” and “the builder’s house is never finished”. This is “Psychologists and psychiatrists treat their own problems in other people.”
Professor Jordan Peterson on climate change and climate policy at the Cambridge Union
https://youtu.be/pBbvehbomrY
@Robertvd. Yes, that might be a pebble in the pool. I have been corresponding with one psych who has picked up on Jordan Peterson’s views, and is at least trying to steer his colleagues in a more reasonable direction. Time will tell if it has any effect.
It might have the same result that I recall in journal New Society, published in the UK 1962 – 88. A probation officer who admitted to trying to get a customer to undertake “new sins for old”, such as, why not just go in for simple break and enter, and give up the robbery with violence? The writer got the sack, either from the journal or his employers. Not sure which, could have been both.
I love the idea of a prison inmate or a parolee being “a customer”, like he has some choice in the matter. In the early 80s I had a girlfriend who worked in the local loony bin, they had new rules which , to destigmatise the mental patients they were caring for ( many also incarcerated ), they had to refer to them as “clients” rather than patients.
Predictably instead of calling someone “mental” to insult them, we just started saying “oh, don’t be a client !!”
No, phobia is an irrational fear and climate anxiety is not irrational, they have been misinformed, manipulated and indoctrinated. Their whole conscious world is saturated with climate BS. They have logical , rational, though misinformed reasons to be fearful and anxious.
That you do not agree with them about climate science does not make them paranoid. Dismissing others who don’t agree as being mentally ill is a pathetic and despicable tactic. It is exactly like saying climate skeptics are “in denial” and psychologically unable to accept the “truth” about climate.
If two gunmen break into a woman’s home and say they are going to rape her, she may be paralised with fear. That would not be irrational. BTW neither “paralizing fear” nor phobia are proper nouns and should not be capitalised.
CNN = CHIT NOT NEWS
Kim Kardashian’s ass on Instagram has more viewers than CNN in primetime. Really. Post-Mueller, only “resistance” die-hards believe CNN has credibility.
The same kind of people you cite, looking for a negative world to validate their depression, have FB and others load up their “news feeds” with every heinous animal cruelty story (real or fabricated) the world over. They want an excuse to think everyone’s horrible and everything’s dreadful. Did you ever notice we don’t use the phrase, “well-adjusted” anymore? Well-adjusted people live in the world as it is, and don’t become neurotic because it isn’t perfect. Likewise, they don’t comb the earth for stories that will validate their bummer. I might add, this is mostly a “first-world problem.” People working hard for a living don’t have time for this!
Not sure it would help, as the ‘scientists’ reinforcing the political rhetoric they parrot don’t understand basic science either. How else can they claim that the Earth knows the difference between the next Joule of forcing and all the others so the next one can be about 3 times more powerful at warming the surface (4.4 W/m^2 per W/m^2 vs. 1.6 W?m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing)? How else could they have so obviously misapplied feedback analysis by ignoring its only 2 preconditions (strict linearity and an implicit power supply)? How else could they deprecate the scientific method in favor of a political narrative arising from a conflict of interest at the IPCC (the IPCC is chartered to support the UNFCCC, scientific truth be damned)? How else can they make ‘scientific’ claims that even a 6’th grader can tell are impossible (the world will end in 12 years)?
Is Trump having an effect? Clearly he is, and we can only hope that he succeeds.
You can’t blame this on the optimistic Trump. The blame falls on the “Chicken Licken the sky is falling” folks in the UN, universities, media, etc., who tell us the end is coming. The alarmists are scaring kids from the time they start watching TV into college and beyond. It’s no wonder many people have mental problems related to “climate change.”
And CNN does not see any complicity on its part?
Who do they believe is broadcasting the hysteria and panicking the general public?
They are definitely creating and propogating the Climophobe Hysteria
I like the line about Trump’s ‘lack of political will’.
Anybody ever seen anyone will more political will than Trump? Well, at least with an ‘R’ next to party-affiliation?
Yet one more of innumerable examples of progressives forcing reality through their acceptable viewpoints.
See, the ‘will’ is telling these tantrum-throwing children ‘no’.
And long-overdue.
Just like what CNN did all day recently with the “breaking” story from the NYT about Trump losing $1B early in his career. A fact which is not only well-known but one which Trump openly admits — even turned it into the subject of a book. So, (1) the guy who turned the economy around is a financial moron and/or (2) he didn’t pay taxes on money he didn’t have. Amazing! If Trump cured cancer, CNN would find something wrong with that and heap the blame on him.
Trump actually opened up the first episode of ‘The Apprentice’ with that story.
I wish I had a $billion to lose!
I don’t blame this “climate anxiety” on Trump … I blame it on KTVU’s weather maps. Every morning, my local leftist SF Bay Area Fox News Station televises temperatures on color-coded maps which … I kid you not … renders 80deg.F. Temps in RED!! 90’s in BRIGHT RED!! And 100’s in some sort of apocalyptic PURPLE RED!!! As IF 80deg.F is a “fearful RED” temp.
This is just ONE example of the subliminal (and blatant) climate-hysteria-FEAR being drummed into the heads and vision of every citizen. The Brainwashing extends into every avenue of our lives as BIG Climate Change proselytizes the public.
There is no doubt that most of the members of the Greenblob and those young people that have succumbed to their propaganda suffer from mental (health) problems.
What a pathetic group of people falling so easily for climate is “dooming us” propaganda, I was on my front porch this morning looking at the sky, savoring the cool air, not feeling a bit threatened by it, this after 30 years of slight warming.
Agree, Sunsettommy!
I suggest the neurotic ‘climate change’ afflicted should join us out on the deck and listen to Louis Armstrong – What A Wonderful World! with a cool drink at hand. It’s good for the soul!
https://youtu.be/A3yCcXgbKrE
So sad. I remember when I was young my parents wanted to be happy. Now everyone seems to want these kids to be psychotic. So sad.
per the great prophet Bobby McFerrin
What a load of nonsense, making up fictitious problems to get more people to believe their propaganda.
Good.
Getting the diagnosis is halfway to getting the cure. I prescribe subscriptions to gwpf, humanprogress.org and wuwt.
And abrupt withdrawal from CNN.
But they could go into CNN Withdrawrl Syndrome
Climate hypochondria.
proves that snowflakes melt under the slightest heat….
But of course all these ER kiddies use fossil fuels every day, are they even aware of it? Like fish unaware of the water around them, they are so in denial, the HYPOCRITES!
You can not claim some one is in denial at the same time as calling them hypocritical. It is self contradictory.
Can hurt mental health make one worry about climate change? Fixed it for them.
Nothing says global warming like running your heater in the second week of May.
Too many Media Studies and Drama Classes at University these days.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-weather-forecast-coldest-6-14999288
“178 year record low temperatures in the UK”
The recent “Extreme Extinction” protests by the glued and unglued have apparently borne fruit!
The most effective means of lowering temperatures appears to have been achieved by members of the public simply gluing their anterior private parts to the pavement.
On the other hand one must assume the reverse to be true. ie that the irresponsible ad hoc adhesion of posterior parts to roadways is partially to blame for moderate global warming (AD2019).
My suggestion is that persons resident in the lower latitudes (0 to +/-20), in order to achieve cooling, should assume a face down position and bond themselves to the roadway.
Persons resident in higher latitudes (21 to +/- 90), in order to achieve moderate warming, should stick their asses to the ground thereby effectively controlling methane emissions.
On average we should all then be well on the road to temperature nirvana!
AGW, the Emanuel Goldstein of our time ?
“Alfred E. Neuman” needs to make a comeback.
See what happens when you scare the crap out of generations.
tsk tsk-no sarc. tag.
What, we worry?
Thats interesting, having grown up in the ‘Shadow of the Bomb’ I’m wondering if scaring generations is not the norm ? If so, then we must be making progress as today’s scare is so obviously a Turnip Ghost 🙂
This meme will follow the same route as the EMF sensitivity BS. It won’t be long before people will apply for disability benefits because they have been made ill by fear of climate change.
There should evolve a market for similar placebo devices to protect against climate change.
You heard it here first…
A tinfoil hat will reflect heat. — Buy one now before your hair catches afire!
Send ’em to the Arctic Circle and let them form a settlement there; y’all want COLD, you can have it! Heck, at the 3mm. rate of sea-level rise, my property should be “waterfront” in a hundred million years or so . . .
Of course, President Trump doesn’t ‘lack political will’ in this case. Seems to me he is VERY willful on the subject. It’s just that the commentator doesn’t like what his political will is aimed at.
And don’t you think a normal person, after bringing a young girl to tears, would be ashamed of having caused such anxiety and grief. But, nope, it’s gotta be someone else’s fault she is crying. That is pathetic.
And I thought the funny papers were only out on Sunday.
Die Ins are back.
Once again “trendy” liberals bring back the tactics of their grandparents.
It’s the same people in every generation.
Since today most so-called “psychologists” or “psychiatrists” are like the “elites”, with no human empathy left, diagnose some “spectrum” disorder, and reach for their psychotropic drugs, all very medical of course.
How many of these “extinction” kids are actually damaged by these drugs? Not even mentioning all the well known stuff, these are supposed to be medically prescribed by serious doctors – who don’t even know what they do.
Willis covered some of this in a post about guns giving examples of those that had been filled up with “medication” and then committed serious crimes.
Here are some of them.
• Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public.
• Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.
• Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.
The whole post is here.
https://rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/20/guns-and-home-invasion/
James Bull
Climate change isn’t doing anything to anyone’s mental health. Lib raising kids to be self-centered, entitled little snowflakes is screwing up their mental health.
tsk tsk – you climate deniers make me lol out loud.
President Trump lacks political will, who can deny it ? Obama showed true grit when he went along with the Paris popularity contest and don’t forget who stopped the seas rising.
As far as climate anxiety is concerned, are you blind??? I was in London recently and witnessed the hopelessness and despair of the extinction rebellion protesters. In fact one of the ladies glued her breasts to my hands and it took me 23 hours to free myself
Least-wise that’s what you told the constable, and you’re “sticking” with it.
Is this the one?
Eternal: Took one (or would that be two) for the team, eh :0)
In fact one of the ladies glued her breasts to my hands and it took me 23 hours to free myself
Don’t think that will save you when she gives you the old #metoo treatment
I agree CNN is not a news channel.
CNN has become a propaganda channel that pushes, no questions allowed, all emotion, group think.
Good people agree with the propaganda, bad people criticize the propaganda.
25 years ago, the news channels helped our country resolve problems and prioritize problems.
In depth discussion of red line policies is not allowed on CNN or any of the fake news channels as most of the red line (to disagree is to be a denier) propaganda policies cannot be defend for common sense reasons.
Illegal immigration is not good for anyone. The legal system is being used to attack the president for political reasons, not to for law and order. Judges are making policy that is the responsibility of congress. The Chinese are cheating to win the economic games. The Democrats are tearing the country apart with chaos policies and with an unending attack on Trump.
There are dozens of independent observations and analysis results that disproved CAGW.
CAGW has been and is a waste of political energy and the solution to the fake problem green scams are a waste of money.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/12/22-very-inconvenient-climate-truths/
While not used in the guide, the term “climate anxiety” has been used in the media to describe the supposed psychological toll of worrying about global warming.
CNN and others are just too stupid to look in the mirror. Or too venal.
Makes you wonder where all the other worries went.
* Growing up
* How to buy a car
* How to get a date
* How to pay for college
* How to pass college
* How to get a job
* How to buy a house
* How to pay for a kid
I don’t suppose any of these contribute to worry or mental health problems!
Jordan Peterson life is suffering
https://youtu.be/wLvd_ZbX1w0
CNN is too ideologically committed to a false truth confirmed by their political posturing to accept a real truth that would make them look stupid or venal. Classic denial …
To use their method of taking statements totally out of context, I quote from paragraph 5 above “…mental illness is more common among mental health professionals.”. It reminds me of a statement made back in the early ’60s by the head of the department of psychology at my university: “All psychology majors are either alcoholics, schizophrenics or sex maniacs, or more than one of the above.”