Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Guardian, people who reject the idea we are in the midst of a climate emergency may be suffering an extreme form of the kind of climate anxiety Guardian readers experience, when wrestling with their conscience over whether to purchase an avocado.
‘Hijacked by anxiety’: how climate dread is hindering climate action
A growing school of psychologists believe the trauma of the climate crisis is a key barrier to change
Jillian Ambrose
Energy correspondentThu 8 Oct 2020 17.00 AEDTYou’re browsing in a supermarket and fretting mildly about the air miles of some green beans. Or you’re daydreaming of that island holiday you deserve once the pandemic has died down but worrying about whether you should be flying.
…
Maybe nothing you do will matter anyway.
They call it climate anxiety – a sense of dread, gloom and almost paralysing helplessness that is rising as we come to terms with the greatest existential challenge of our generation, or any generation.
…
“As that trauma is coming to the surface today we see this as anxiety,” she says.
Those left standing in a supermarket unsure whether they should buy an avocado may be suffering from mild eco-anxiety, according to Hickman. “You’re not falling apart but you feel caught in a dilemma.”
…
In its most extreme form this inability to engage presents itself as a complete denial of the climate crisis and climate science. But even among those who accept the dire predictions for the natural world, there are “micro-denials” that can block the ability to take action.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/08/anxiety-climate-crisis-trauma-paralysing-effect-psychologists
Who would have guessed that our repressed feelings of extreme guilt for enjoying the occasional chicken avocado salad are what drive us to reject the climate emergency?
The only question, should we seek a resolution to our repressed anxiety by cutting back on Avocado consumption, in the hope that the intensity of our climate guilt recedes sufficiently that we become consciously aware of it?
Or would it be better to provoke a crisis of conscience which forces us to acknowledge our personal climate anxiety, by eating more Avocados?
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No offense Guardian- the only questions I ask myself when I want to buy an avocado are: 1) is it too expensive, and 2) is it ripe enough? I hate waiting for them to get ripe to eat it.
Expense is relative to current circumstances, and it’s fairly easy to tell whether they are ripe (I usually find the opposite problem at my store). My questions are: Guacamole? Or chicken tortilla soup?
(People who eat them in sandwiches are just WRONG. But, unlike a Guardian writer, I have a libertarian type of philosophy, so will let it pass…)
The avocado analogy is highly apropos when describing Climate Change Crazies.
The Avocado is
GREEN
Has a HUGE PIT at it’s core
And once exposed to the light of day and a little O2 it promptly turns brown-shirt brown
A huge INEDIBLE pit at its core. If you eat that, you will regret it, as “This, too, will pass” won’t apply to the pit. You will meet a gastroenterologist you never knew existed before, and probably a psychologist who will want to know why you decided to swallow the pit in the first place.
The ones that I get, I would choke on first. (My death certificate would undoubtedly read “Respiratory failure – presumed CoViD-19.”)
Wrong
BAT sandwiches on sour dough are the bomb
Bacon avocado tomato
We embrace alternate views on this website
Wow! That sounds wonderful. Never thought of doing that but I’ll have to try it. Thanks for the post.
Crisp thick bacon
And some fresh spinach
Bacon Lettuce Tomato BLT
Bacon Lettuce Avocado Tomato BLAT
Bacon Lettuce Avocado Spinach Tomato BLAST
That sounds awesome. Except for the avocado
And the tomato…
BACON!!!
Sounds like you need to try is a BOBOBO
Bacon Over Bacon On Bacon Open sandwich.
Just don’t eat the bread – too many carbs.
Arugula w sunny side up egg topped with avocado slices salt and fresh lime juice squeezed on top. Not exactly a sandwich but delish none the less
ACE: Avocado, cheese and egg. Add some spouts and you have a taste delight.
I just ate one in a pork burrito, did I do wrong?
Guac it if you dare
AVocados give me gas. Therefore, if I buy them and eat them, I will be contributing greenhouse gases to the climate change shebang and will become Miss/Ms/Msr/Mlle Greengoo, when – really – I would rather be stepped on by a warthog.
No offense meant to warthogs. They make excellent porkchops.
“They make excellent porkchops.”
Wouldn’t that be pretty close to cannibalism?
Wouldn’t the opposite be Climate Cabalism?
Are you saying Sara is a warthog??
Sara
I’m opening a new business where customers can eat lunch while their gas tank is filled up by my staff, and their credit cards are charged when they finish eating. I’m developing a brand name and need some help. Right now I’m thinking of ordering a big sign that says:
“Eat & Get Gas”.
… reminds me of one of my inventions for snow skiers who don’t want to take time out to go back to the ski lodge when “nature calls:” The Ski-In & Out-house.
I like that!!! Laughed so hard I spooked the cat out of a perfectly good nap. 🙂
Kudos!
Sara:
While laughs are needed these days, my prior comment was intended to be serious.
Glad to hear ypu hAve a pussy cat. My cat Mr. Sneaky, gets his exercise by moving from one sleeping spot to another. Sort of like me. For extra income, we are developing a Mr. Sneaky Slept Here Tour of our home. Of course we’ll have to tidy up first, before we start the 10 dollar tours, which may take a few year. The tour will feature Mr. Sneaky”s 150 pounds of clay litter poop box, one of the biggest indoor private home cat poop boxes in America. Which I hope will be featured in an upcoming edition of Architectural Digest. This comment is serious too.
They want to pretend that we are so drastically affected by climate change that we are into displacement behavior, like a pigeon finding itself about to become cat food stopping to preen, or college students cleaning their rooms instead of studying for final exams. In these cases, displacement behavior is temporary, short-lived, but these climate alarmists are trying to say that the undetectable climate change is effecting people to critical levels.
The problem is that here is not one shred of defensible scientific evidence for manmade global warming. Put aside the fact that we have not warmed significantly since 1988, as we are not causing climate change, we have to deal with natural climate change by adapting, which is what we are best at doing.
It is diagnostic to the warmists’ problem of pushing a scam that they completely ignore that Sol is going night-night for the next 30 to 120 years, which is how long it might be before we get back UP TO the temperature we have at present.
I just think of the gargantuan estimation variance their models generate and wonder how such seemingly smart people can fool themselves into believing almost anything.
The question I as myself, is: Where is the evidence for a climate crisis?
The most likely response you’ll get is them calling you a white supremacist!
So happens that I googled the characteristics of white supremacy a few days ago and from a workshop manual used way back in 2001 to counter the “problem”, found that I easily qualify as a white supremacist!
And I would suggest most of us qualify, too, regardless of skin color.
Now we’ll see if this comment gets past moderation!…it’s such a misunderstood, mis-applied hot-button issue right now.
Every 10 yrs starting in 1980 the world was supposed to come to an end due to global warming. Every 10yrs you have to reset the tme.
Prudhoe
The world is coming to an end in 12 years, not 10 years — how dare you mislead people!
It did come to an end…did you miss it??
Not just Earth. The whole universe has come to an end several times.
“There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
– Douglas Adams
Likely with the first use of the Improbability Drive
Mike Jonas and Bryan A:
Yes, you nailed it. The improbability drive was Michael Mann’s hard drive, first used to store his hockey stick calculations…and the Universe was immediately replaced by another one more bizarre and seemingly inexplicable.
Prudhoe
In my prior comment about your comment I pointed out the world was going to end in 12 years, not 10 years. But this year is almost over so 11 years would be more accurate. We should be thankful that the brilliant climate perfesser AlexandrIa Occasionally Coherent keeps us informed. Her mentor, AL “the climate blimp” Gore, is too busy spending his money to spend much time being a climate perfesser. And that was AFTER Al invented the internet.
AOC’s claim that we only had 12 years left was made about a year and a half ago, so we’re almost at 10 years. 😀
AOC – the expert.
Richard Greene,
Please be advised that the climate “perfesser” you cite first made her 12 year prediction in late 2018, so now, in late 2020, its 10 years left so Robert Prudhomme is fully correct. I am retired and planning on spending my last dime in late 2030. If it is to be 2031, I will need to make an adjustment. Fortunately, as we all know, climate science is a precise discipline so accuracy is built in and I am confident that no adjustment will be needed.
Doomsday resets every New Years Day. So it’s still twelve years away. Unless we dump a few trillion dollars NOW into the Green Machine.
Ah, what date precisely? Morning or afternoon? I don’t want to miss the big event
The world will end at the same time energy production from fusion arrives – 10 years from last year, this year, and the next.
DHR
Unfortunately, I had done my own calculations in 2008, and expected the world to end in 2020. I thought my calculations, done with a sturdy aluminum slide rule (I dont trust confusers) were accurate to three decimal places. Unfortunately, my math may have been slightly off, and I have already spent my last dime. I now spend my retirement selling pencils and condoms on a busy street corner in Detroit. Business is booming.
“and condoms “
Recycled ?
I think AOCs last name is actually Occluded Cortex since nothing sensible gets trhough!
Actually
Occluded
Cortex
You may be right
It ended in 2012 with O’Bummer’s 2nd term and the USA became an ObamaNation
“brilliant climate perfesser AlexandrIa Occasionally Coherent”
She’s never coherent.
“AlexandrIa Occasionally Coherent”
When? I must have missed it. AOC being coherent, that is.
On January 5, 1978, Page 17, the New York Times reported we had 30 years of global cooling with no end in sight. The obvious reality is that we all froze to death several decades ago.
I don’t even look at Avocados never mind buy them, where does that put me on the “denier” scale?
Whatever scale it is, there’s two of us there.
Make that three.
Three, I hate avacados. Period. Can’t stand them.
To the left of someone who doesn’t buy green bananas
I have SO tortured myself about the guilt of being a denier for years. Now, however, I feel liberated by this Nobel Prize standard research because I hate avocados and thus don’t have to buy them.
Um, there’s logic in there somewhere.
Avocados…I love’ em. Global warming? Like “Waiting for Godot”.
First the imported avocados. Next the bananas. But then the really big items the Brits cannot do without….tea and coffee! The solution? Bring back the Clipper sailing ships to import tropical foodstuff to Britain; those ships didn’t burn fossil fuels.
That’s right! The oil they used was whale oil for the running lights.
If we have to go petrochemical free I want Al Gore to be the first rendered for whale oil.
You didn’t know ?
They are sailing again 😀
Fantastic! So the alternative greenhouse-gas free would be nuclear powered cargo ships. Which would be more cost effective, sails or nuclear power?
Sails are great right up to the point where you need to manoeuvre a big ship into a port….
“Sails are great right up to the point………”
…. when you have no wind !
PS
Timbercoast, cargo under sail
Avocados like warming. !
Try growing them in Siberia !
Jim- I like it! Godot Warming – though the Climate Wroughters and their useful fools wouldnt understand it, which I also like.
Gadot? I’d wait for that Gal for as long as I had to
ROTFLMAO. You just can’t make this up.
“Avocado Buyer’s Guilt” ??? WTF? I feel so guilty I think I’ll have another.
1 avocado, 2 tbsp olive oil, 2 cloves garlic (crushed), mash together and spread on toast. I feel so guilty.
Add some drops of lemon juice, delicious ! And the avocado may not change the color.
Thanks. I knew I forgot something 🙂
“when wrestling with their conscience over whether to purchase an avocado”
I quite agree that is about as much stress as it should provoke.
For me not any.
I get some avocados guilt-free. My neighbor has an excellent tree, and it has grown large enough that a few branches hang over my side of our fence. The avocados can be picked green for a half year, and ripen indoors. No greenhouse gases generated for transportation, and the tree actually CONSUMES carbon dioxide to grow the avocados (would you believe it??).
Avocado anxiety as a consequence of the green blob sounds racist. Doesn’t all green goo matter?
OMG what is I am missing about avocados? You seem to know why they cause “suffering from mild eco-anxiety,?” What am I missing????
Holy, Guacamole!!
This is how religions and sins operate on guilt human psyche.
The claimed Climate emergency is simply a superstition being peddled and promoted to the gullible masses. Most people figure out it’s nonsense, but that still leaves enough who are seriously impaired, like Eric Holthaus. Basically they live their lives in fear and soiling themselves over a superstition.
Interestingly I noted a lefty comment on the web concerning the UK Covid response. She said that she:
“…was in a state. Half the time I’m attacking people for not wearing masks and standing too close – the other half of the time I’m attacking the government for pushing useless and pointless laws about the disease….”
I had thought this was the dawn of wisdom – that she would see that she was in a logically confused state. Now I’m beginning to think that she was just suppressing the obvious conflict that anyone experiences if they religiously follow what they are told to do by someone who neither knows what they are doing nor worries about making their commands logically consistent…
I keep thinking back to mid-20th century adolescence and the notion that some other kid had “cooties”. It’s amazing how powerful the propaganda is these days.
The word “cooties” is a superb way of expressing the concept of ritual contamination. Even a five year old can get it.
Pro-Choice religion, delivered by mortal gods and goddesses, spread by its acolytes, faithful, and undecideds, based on selective, opportunistic, relativistic, politically congruent (“=”) principles… undeniable, irreconcilable, an ethical choice.
All religion is delivered by mortals.
sounds like Victoria in Aus right now;-)
Oh the sweet logic of Covid restriction rules.
Here in South Oz you are not allowed to stand at a bar and drink, but can sit at a bar and drink. Apparently the change in altitude makes all the difference. Stand and you are high enough to infect the entire room. Sit and the slightly denser air pressure keeps you safe. Unless you are in a public food court, where sitting to consume meals is a no no. Takeaway meals and eating standing up? Yeah… that’s okay.
Also bemusing is our states current restriction of 2 square metres of floor space min per person in an area. This rule is also meant to be used in parallel with the 1.5m gap rule.
Now if you understand how maths works you would already know that a square with 2 square metre area has 1.414m sides and hence may be wondering if the 1.414m rule clashes with the 1.5m rule.
Well… No, but only because the 1.5m rule is actually worse than you think.
In all official publications the 1.5m is clearly shown NOT to be the distance between two people, but the CLEARANCE. Distance would be centreline to centreline, like bolt holes in a fabricated part. The clearance in our context is the air gap between shoulder to shoulder, so the actual distance is this gap plus a shoulder width.
(draw a sketch – it makes sense)
So if we take worse case and a 95 percental male the distance between two people under the official guildlines is actually a smidge over 2m. This means that if you fill your room with people as per the 2 square metre rule (which is the dominant rule in my state’s guildlines) then you are forced to ignore the 1.5m instruction by roughly 600mm per person.
So well done all involved. Guildlines and restrictions that cannot actually be complied with. Well done.
“forces us to acknowledge our personal climate anxiety, by eating more Avocados?”
Yes, to alleviate my anxieties I eat 3 avocados a day….
This strikes me as an example of how circular thinking, whenever it tries to carry some weight, becomes noticeably eccentric.
I alleviate my personal climate anxiety by burning tires.
I just think of the gargantuan estimation variance their models generate and wonder how such seemingly smart people can fool themselves into believing almost anything.
I alleviate mine by putting off lawn mowing. It saves gas and sequesters more carbon… temporarily at least.
We buy our avocados at Costco. $8 for a bag of 5. I don’t feel one way or the other about it.
I might be a denier.
I don’t eat Avocado but I’m now anxious about my morning Grapefruit.
What ruined my morning Grapefruit was when my doctor put me on Statins.
He’s frying my liver so I won’t die from heart ailments.
Today’s sound science. 🤔
Frying your liver! You poor man!
Have you given up your evening post-prandial snifter of brandy? I tell you truly, a nightcap is what keeps my cholesterol down. The brandy keeps the blood slippery, and a daily avocado keeps the inflammation of my arterial walls down. But only one or two servings of alcohol. The third is so bad for you, you might as well be a teetotaler and run their risk of heart disease.
You may want to look into the ketogenic diet and rethink the pharmaceuticals.
https://youtu.be/UZoQiDaWnuE
Turns out 50 year old science originating from a single government scientist and propagated by the USDA is not sound science.
To add an extra 10 years to your life, just go on a one-week, only-water fast every 3 months for the rest of your life. (It will actually feel like an extra 20 years!)
statins and grapefruit –
“According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)Trusted Source, grapefruit can affect the rate that your liver processes drugs. This is dangerous.
A slower breakdown of a drug means you’ll have more of that drug in your bloodstream. More of the drug in your bloodstream can cause certain side effects and affect how well the drug works.”
I like my grapefruit. I take my statins at night. 12 hours should do it. 😉
No complaints from my doctor re liver function tests etc.
Jillian Ambrose is not known as Silly Jilly for nothing.
She’s probably going to be laughing her t!ts off all weekend knowing that some people believe it, and quite possibly have even paid money to read it.
….. speaking of loydo, where did she go ??
Guacamole for lunch then. I’ll skip the toast, too many carbs.
A bit off-topic, but this flat earthist, science non-believer’s mate just won a real Nobel Prize this week, and I was a co-author on the seminal paper that got him there.
1/2 an avocado has about the same carbs as 1 medium slice of white bread.
However, per glycemic index, much better than white bread.
Also per index. Gin is so low, it’s practically a health food. 🙂
Congrats. Do tell us more.
Add tonic to the gin to reduce your chances of getting COVID….
Yes. Don’t leave us hanging. 🙂
As a humanitarian gesture, I’ve considered starting a gofundme account to support the cost of providing Guardian ‘journalists’ with a 6-month sabbatical to enable them to investigate and accept what goes on in the real world, and sever the umbilical with academia that feeds the constant diet of abject tosh that they publish as Guardian articles.
(I still can dream, can’t I – the UN hasn’t made dreaming a crime against humanity yet?)
Just like most of our domesticated food plants, the avocado is tropical in origin (south central Mexico) and grows best in tropical climates: CA, FL, Mexico, C.A. and S.A.). Avocados like it hot. The warmer the better.
The poor sots at the Grunion live in a cold, dank, miserable climate and must import their avocados as well as most other fruits and vegetables, without which they would die of scurvy, a very English disease. Yellowing of the skin, bleeding gums, tooth loss, myalgia, extreme fatigue, debility, anemia, neuropathy, mood swings, and anxiety are common symptoms — common in the deep crevices of the Grunion, that is.
If Grunionistas would get out into the sun, possibly in Spain or Peru, and eat some tropical food like avocados, they would feel a lot better. They might even develop a fondness for warmth and stop being warm-haters. Really, the rest of us don’t want to live in cold, dank, moldy, root cellar climates like they do.
… you mean the “Groinion.”
“the UN hasn’t made dreaming a crime against humanity yet?”
You are safe as long as your dreams remain in your head and you don’t talk about them in public.
They will not criminalise dreams, instead they will find a way to ensure that you only have the right kind of dreams.
Yes, when authorities advise the population take measures against some “threat”, but the evidence of the “threat” is questionable or scanty, many members of the public will experience angst. Which is “psychological trauma” to the weak minded. Witchcraft in the middle ages, prohibition, Y2K, the list just goes on and on…..with CC being a media max-meme because there is always bad weather somewhere, that is evidence of the “threat”. Presently displaced in the headlines by “the-cold-that-kills-0.6%-of-the-infected“.
Of course we are in the midst of a climate emergency. We always have been, and we always will be.
I once built an Avocado suite into my bathroom (you have to be a Brit) and it took me a complete climate cycle to deny it and change it to standard white. What a relief.
Racist?
I recognise all the words in that article, but I have NFI what she’s on about.
It’s the way they are put together that gives meaning. Perhaps is someone could rearrange them it might make sense.
Since we’re on the subject, avocado is from aguacate, Spanish, which is derived from the native āhuacatl>, a Nahuatl word which also meant testicle, for obvious reasons. Enjoy!
OK then, a scrotum of avocados for my guacamole.
Man, I love the green testicles. Whole or crushed what a rush.
So what did the Aztecs call “mountain oysters”?
Maybe they’re white avocados…
…slow bulls
Where is/was the 29th Rocky Mountain Oyster Festival held?
I think they serve them at the Calgary Stampede.
Nope. I am firmly attached to reality and have no such anxiety.
Don’t understand how people can be so naïve and gullible to believe all the climate and covid catastrophe propaganda. Get a life.
TS, You are approaching this too logically and swallowing a display of mock sincerity. This ‘guacamole guilt’ is comfortably substituted for other subconsciously suppressed realizations of conduct they should properly be guilty over. It’s the old magician’s misdirection trick played on oneself for momentary relief. To put it another way, they so wish that something as innocent as acquiring avocados was their worst vice that they first convince themselves that is the case and then try to sell that same silly notion more broadly for socially echoed affirmation. Does that help clarify what is understandably otherwise puzzling?
Okay I get it, the Guardian is about as serious on these planetary scale issues as a teenager with attention deficit disorder.
Those psychologists need to see a psychologist – and not the type who advise the Guardian
“The greatest existential challenge of our generation, or any generation.” Talk about denial of “climate science”. Even the ludicrous RCP 8.5 doesn’t produce catastrophic impacts, let alone existential.
I find it difficult to comprehend anyone who would think that a 2-3 degree increase in global temp is a worse existential threat than, say, Nazi Buzz Bombs and the like.
I have no guilt about the climate. It would be like having guilt about the Sun rising.
I have studied the facts of CO2 driven climate change and reject it’s extreme predictions. No amount of social pressure or propaganda is going to change my mind. Only hard facts will change my mind. Note to climate activists: Computer models do not produce FACTS – when written with an preselected “right” answer in mind they produce propaganda.
There are very few hard facts about CO2 driven climate change. Most available data is not suitable to answering the questions, has been manipulated by biased researchers, and is “proxy” based instead of actual measurements. Proxies have a bad habit of being far more complex and subtle then the scientists using them want to admit.
I don’t eat avocados, nor do I ever Fly if given a choice. So your examples don’t work on me either. I likely have a smaller “Carbon Footprint” than most activists out there, but not for their reasons.
A gentle warming of Earth is a good thing. Hot places may get additional rain but will rise very little in temperature, while cold places become more moderate and receive the most warming. Sea levels are rising, and have been since good measurements became available. Modern mankind has the amazing ability to adapt to slow change so slowly rising sea levels is of no concern.
Psychologists – A laughable group of people most of whom do not understand science, do not understand bias, and make up hypothesis-tripe to rationalize their view of the world and try to overlay it on others. Except for those few conducting real scientific endeavors, psychology should be moved to be under Fine Arts, along with the Writing of Poetry and Fiction.
“psychology should be moved to be under Fine Arts, along with the Writing of Poetry and Fiction.”
More like knitting macrame underwear !
Loopy as fruit loops and twisted as a pretzel.
Old Aztecs actually had a guilt about the Sun rising. They discovered that a daily human sacrifice was necessary to make ti rise the next day. Isn’t it beautiful how we integrate old superstitions into the modern world?
A wicked solution for social progress. Ancient Aztecs. last century’s Socialists, modern communists, too Now, liberals and humpty dumptys. Human sacrificial rites are forward-looking. Deja vu.
“Deja vu”
More like deja phooey.
Doubled as an effective way to keep subjugated tribes from revolting, by depleting them of most of their fighting-age men.