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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Few things beat a prawn-filled avocado with a creamy whisky sauce.
I can do without the prawn filled avocado and the creamy part of the sauce.
I was once a guest for dinner in Cotonou, Benin in West Africa. Before the invite, I was asked if I liked wild game. Visualizing an antelope or some such, I said yes I do. The game turned out to be a sloth with its hair burned off and then roasted in an oven. I was presented with the prime cut – the head, which was simply eyeballs, brains and tongue served with its mouth wide open, a tray of avocado halves stuffed with shrimp, mayonnaise and shallots and a baguette (it is a former French Colony). Well, I got through it all liberally lubricated with the avocados and about half a baguette. The avocado made the challenge doable.
“…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…”
S’Truth! This is an unwitting cry for help from the writer and colleagues. The tone suggests the useful idjits know nothing is going to be done. And also clear, is that there are no fit psychologists to come to their assistance.
Re avocado, I can also see this is an exotic item in the UK. In North America we are buried in them by Mexicans and Californians. Every pub and bar serves, natchos, tacos, burritos and fajitas with globs of guacamole, salsa and hot sauce on the side. Commonly, the ladies green their faces with it as a skin moisturizer and nutrient. So far they seem to be covering up their guilt over it.
“The game turned out to be a sloth with its hair burned off and then roasted in an oven. I was presented with the prime cut – the head, which was simply eyeballs, brains and tongue served with its mouth wide open”
That sounds like a test to me. I would probably have failed that one. 🙂
Where I live, avocados grow on trees and I can buy net bags of them on the street corner for spare change.
I just worry that the eggplant might go radical
Keep in mind that the present 415 ppm (0.0415%) of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere is calculated on a volumetric basis, so one needs to use Avocados’s number (6.02E+23 molecules per mole) to make that calculation.
++++
ROFL 🙂
… it’s 6.02E+23 molecules per guacomole!
What do you get if you mix Guacamole with Swiss Cheese?
.
.
.
.
Holy Mole
Euh… middle class guilt… could they please suffer in silence.
+50
Why bother with anything the Guardian says, so far I cannot think of one thing they have got right!
Apart from Boris is a clown.
Ha ha ha -the Human Animal cannot pass off untruth.
Certainly as I’ve come to understand, vast numbers/amounts of advocado are grown by criminal types who have no hesitation in murdering, raping and pillaging – remaining bits of Rain Forest not least.
Proceeds of advocade farming them goes in drug production, esp Cocaine
Hello Grauniad writers/readers, is *that* actually your concern – the continued supply of coke?
Is *that* the buck you’re passing?
If they (and most climate scientists) were any-more transparent, they’d disappear entirely.
Here’s hoping eh
Dear The Guardian
You are out of your avocado Tree.
Cheers.
Lets see, $10 contribution to TheGuardian, or a $10 bag of avocados… I’ll take the bag. You guys make the choice so easy.
+20
Methinks the Grauniad doth project too much.
As Dan Yergin said today in an interview on the oil industry outlook, future energy demand will come from the developing world where the population growth is. He’s right and it’s not going to be up to the usual elitist tripe in the once greatest countries debating with avocados.
Climate denial? What’s that?
All I see is geothermal denial.
https://principia-scientific.com/dumbest-math-theory-ever-the-greenhouse-gas-effect/
Imagine that, nearly all climate scientists are imbecile followers of a dead “expert”.
http://phzoe.com/2020/09/10/fouriers-accidental-confession/
Dare I wear my flannels to the beach?
Dare I, Dare I eat an avocado?
Love Song of J Alfred Snowflake
The progressives have their heads so far up their rabbit holes, they can’t see they’re headed off a cliff.
Can’t wait for her lecture tour.
a sense of dread, gloom and almost paralysing helplessness
I see the same attitudes with the Covid situation. What is it about (some) people that they almost revel in the misery?
A certain segment of our populations here in the west think they get some kind of virtue points for being helpless victims.
“a sense of dread, gloom and almost paralysing helplessness”
That’s her life !,, sad isn’t it.
These journalists have some form of mental illness. They need help and should not be mocked. Perhaps family or friends can reach out to them.
What ever I buy, I never feel guilty, and have no idea why I should.
I confess I worry about two things: making sure I get the mild guacamole, and making sure I get enough of it. I’m super tense at the grocery store.
More blind leftist projection, and making excuses, self psycho-analysis, crazy liberal hand wringing, because they KNOW they use fossil fuels every day – so very fashionable to write stories about reasons they do not make sacrifices for the cause.
Chicken Little, having been hit on the head with an acorn, ran around the farm yelling, “The sky is falling!” But the other animals, being so full of dread at the obvious fact of imminent sky falling, slipped into a terrible form of psychological denial that caused them not to run around screaming as well. As the terrible revealed reality of sky falling penetrated their consciousness, the cow merely looked up and muttered, “Imbecile.” The pig simply snorted, “You’re nuts ( pun neither intended nor taken).” The horse, meanwhile, chose to snicker and cry out, “Be quiet, you blabbering lunatic! You were just hit by an acorn!”
And boy, did those other animals ever turn out to be sorry that they were in so much denial. If only they had had the mental fortitude of the chicken, they could have averted the crisis. Or is that not how the story goes?
Chicken Little for Guardian readers? 🙂
https://youtu.be/UTgNtvTuYRU
Dear Grauniad, We have an avocado tree in our backyard in Sydney. Do we need to feel guilt when we pick and eat one? Should we wait 10 years until the World ends to enjoy one?
I felt so guilty about the trees being felled so I stopped reading the Guardian in 1981….oh there was another reason…..it was not very good.
I wonder just how brainwashed you have to be , or pretend to be, to get a job at the Guardian?
They must have a test.
Some people are just OK with never telling others what they truly believe. I used to know a senior wind farm engineer, he was totally OK with not believing in what he was doing.
The closest he ever came to admitting he knew it was all nonsense was when he told me there wasn’t a lot of other career choices than what he did for a living, if you wanted a well paid engineering job in Britain.
“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.””
Oh trust me, if this is one of the problems in your life, the present tense “falling apart” is not correct. You may want to go see a shrink at that point.
The Guardian is also an advocate for diversity (i.e. color judgment) and exclusion dogma that denies individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, normalizes color blocs, color quotas, and affirmative discrimination. They need to lose their Pro-Choice religion in order to mitigate progress.