Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t John Garrett; According to Princeton psychology professor Elke Weber, lots of people are popping pills to cope with climate anxiety, and more people should raise the issue at Thanksgiving – they will discover their entire family wants climate action.
Coping With The Reality Of Climate Change
August 12, 20214:25 PM ET
Heard on All Things ConsideredNPR’s Audie Cornish speaks with psychologist Elke Weber about the way individuals deal with the threat of climate change.
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CORNISH: Increasingly, people are dealing directly with the results of climate change – right? – record heat across the country. How do people respond when they’re confronted with the sort of bigness of the issue of climate change? What kinds of emotions can that draw out?
WEBER: It can be incredibly overwhelming, especially among younger people. And so there’s no question that climate anxiety has gone drastically up by contemplation about sort of what kind of world we live in and what kind of a world we might leave to our children and grandchildren. So it’s very debilitating symptoms that oftentimes have to be treated with medication or with psychotherapy.
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CORNISH: What’s the effect of seeing governments not act quickly or aggressively enough? Is this something that comes up for people when it comes to sort of how they take in the idea of climate change, how they react to it?
WEBER: In psychology, there’s this notion of pluralistic ignorance – that we might be concerned about an issue, but we don’t realize how many other people are also concerned about the issue because oftentimes, when things are polarized and charged, we don’t talk about it. You know, we don’t talk about it at Thanksgiving. If people talked about it more, they would realize that their concern about climate change is actually widely shared. And so therefore, you know, I think there would be more awareness on the part of politicians that many people in their constituencies, you know, sort of do want them to take action.
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Read more: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/12/1027198507/coping-with-the-reality-of-climate-change
Going by the last few election, I’m guessing there are a large number of Americans who don’t see climate action as their number one priority. So I think Elke Weber is being a little optimistic about the prospects that everyone will agree, if true believers proselytise about the alleged need for radical climate action at the Thanksgiving table.
I have no doubt climate anxiety is causing real problems. If you brainwash kids into thinking the world is on the brink of destruction, and nobody is doing anything about it, you get a lot of extremely anxious kids – many of whom embrace self destructive choices like taking hard drugs, or lose their minds to large doses of prescribed anti-depressants. What is the point of saving money, getting a better education, planning for the future, if you believe there will be no future?
I do believe the climate crisis narrative is slowly dying, 40 years of predicting the imminent end of the world due to human emissions is wearing a little thin. But the broken lives and human wreckage will remain, long after politicians abandon even the pretence of caring about climate change.
“You know, we don’t talk about it at Thanksgiving. If people talked about it more, they would realize that their concern about climate change is actually widely shared.”
Remember the last time “Government” wanted us to use the holidays to sell their policies to our families? That worked out well.
Fear of climate – or climate of fear
https://youtu.be/w_ybzC2wP7Q
The sorts of people who allows fear of climate change affect their lives to this extent are only seizing on the currently trending malady. They are the same people who suffer from Long Covid and insist they nearly died from covid but were never diagnosed or hospitalized. They also believe they are gluten-intolerant and allergic to eggs in any form. Facebook is full of support groups for these pathetic creatures.
Pamela, Long Covid does actually exist. How do I know, I got the POS? Being 65, I got my second vaccine shot on March 1st, but on about April 15th, I actually got the f-kin Chinese virus and it was confirmed by orthogonal antibody test for antibodies against proteins other than those in the spike.
If you think I’m speaking like an internet idiot, you should know that my lab was the first to make diagnostic tests for HIV, for HCV (last year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine) and, by a ridiculous coincidence, we were also the first to clone the furin protease enzyme gene/cDNA sequence.
I wish people would leave me the fck alone. Not you Pamela, you’re OK.
So Phil, you are one of the break-through cases? I’m older and refuse to get the jab nor am I worried about getting sick. No co-morbidities and excellent immune system. Take care and don’t let the bastards drag you down!
As an attorney, I specialize in Social Security Disability. One of my clients had COVID 19. He is now on O2 24/7 and not able to work.
“Long COVID” is a real thing.
No, Democrat/leftarded stupidity is driving debilitating psychological disorders. When you make people terrified of the flu and other such horsesh*t they are going to go crazy/er.
What drives my climate anxiety ?
AMO and PDO in negative, near negative stage
If the youngsters bring up climate change at Thanksgiving–or any other sit down–ask them what should BE DONE about it?
No one has a good answer. Everything forced by government is tyrannical and harmful to poor/lower class people. Can poor people buy electric cars? Pay for more electricity? Be taxed for road miles driven (and often have to drive miles to their low income jobs)? Force people to NOT use wood to heat homes and food? Give up the abundant and cheaper fossil fuels for more expensive alternatives? Let China and India belch out coal smoke?
As I said, the solutions are awful, because they create hardship and are compulsory. And if compulsory, not following them means some punishment will follow.
” Be taxed for road miles driven “
Currently those driving internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles (aka – carbon based fuel) do pay for miles driven. I live in the Great Left Coast State of Washington. Our gasoline tax is $0.678 [Combined State & Federal Tax Rate/Gallon].**
Thus a vehicle that gets 25 mpg costs 2.7¢ per mile. Within the State, there are tolls also.
It is time to charge electric vehicles (EVs) for road miles, and remove all other perks and subsidies.
**The State Dept. of Transportation, and counties, are fixing lots of roads since July 2016 when the current rate took effect.
The socialist government in Victoria, Australia recently tried to tax EVs for km driven. There was an uproar. They had to reduce some other tax on them to placate the woke.
Hilariously, it just hilights the fact that these governments don’t care about CAGW, they only care about taxes!
At least Washington is using their road tax to keep the roads in good shape. I have driven in your state many times, east to west, north to south, back and forth, and don’t recall any horrible road conditions like in Illinois…
Totally agree that EVs need to start paying and the subsidies need to be stopped. But then the subsidies for wind mills and solar panels have to go too!
This is a NEW tax, in addition to the current road tax you cited, that they are proposing in the Infrastructure bill. It adds more taxes to gas/diesel powered and captures taxes on electric vehicles.
Wow. That really is self serving. Claiming people are having psychological problems due to climate anxiety while you stoke the fears of climate change. As an Infectious disease clinician this would be like me spreading leprosy around so I could get more business.
Remember Lucy’s “psychiatric help” stand in the Peanuts comics? 5 cents for advice. Perhaps Lucy’s take on climate change anxiety would be, “GET A GRIP!!! The planet will be FINE!!! 5 cents please.” Seriously, the doomsayers are producing extensive multi-generational harm.
Perfect! 🙂
When I sit in my backyard sipping a cold drink and I look at the trees and flowers, I see nothing different happening there than I have for the last 40 years.
Except for ants. There are more Argentine ants now than there ever were.
They have an unprecedented population boom and I hate those little bugs. All efforts to eradicate them have failed.
They spread damaging aphids, mold and bacteria everywhere. I’m sure that has affected me in psychological ways that have never been studied, but no one ever talks about them. If people talked about ants more, they would realize that their concern about ant change is actually widely shared. And so therefore, you know, I think there would be more awareness on the part of politicians that many people in their constituencies, you know, sort of do want them to take action.
Would you say we’ve reached an ant tipping point?
We certainly aren’t close to peak ant yet.
When I lived in San Diego (40 years), I had many battles with Argentine ants. They are almost impossible to eradicate, efforts at which usually serving to create multiple, new colonies. I feel your pain.
Come to the Southeast USA and deal with our Fire Ants.
You’ll never complain about Argentine Ants again.
Actually, I think it is the other way around. Debilitating psychological disorders are driving climate change anxiety.
It’s what I was raving about (drugs in all shapes/forms) earlier today in another thread
Puritanism and Catastrophism are also ‘drugs’ – but different ways.
Puritanism is simply the trashing of ‘something’ that ‘someone else’ has that is perceived to be ‘enjoyable’ or ‘fun’ for that other person
And Fossil Fuels are ‘fun’
Basically= Epic and out-of-control Selfishness.
Attempts are vigourously made to disguise it though, obviously.
We call those ‘Good Intentions’
Catastrophism is born of paranoia and is the revelling in doom & disaster scenarios.
Wallowing in depression.
NOT the ‘sad’ sort of depression like when your pet dog has just passed away or when the GF has dumps you
This is Long Term Depression usually occasioned by ‘drugs’
Paranoia is the inability to think or react quickly to ‘situations’ (the tendency to panic) so the victims of Catastrophism comfort themselves by flagging up and exaggerating how bad their situation is. To their minds at least.
They do this in the hope that ‘someone’ will come and rescue them. Just like in the movies, classically when The Cavalry came riding over the hill – just as the bad-guy Indians were gonna succeed in their attack on The Fort
Sound familiar? e.g. Code Red, Tipping Points, Got to act now now now
= Extreme anxiety when The Cavalry are deemed to be ‘running late’
We call that ‘Socialism’ = buck passing = a desire to return to the womb = return to happy carefree days of childhood when Mum/Dad took care of everything
I’ve often wondered what would happen if/when you actually did (chemically or somehow otherwise) disable everything that folks learn as they’re growing up.
I can only imagine you would be left with A Child – a generally helpless thing that only knows its instinct = what it was born with.
Nicely describes the simplistic kindergarten-grade garbage that passes for Science these days.
Also the tribalism, the name calling and the appeals to authority.
It is all So Childish…
NPR flushed its credibility down the toilet a decade ago. Why it is still publicly funded is a mystery.
Republicans should do something about that they next time they get in a position to do so. Defund NPR.
Brave new world. Living in a fake society, popping pills to make you happy.
Hypothesis: This is simply the dysfunctional people that grew up in the 1960s and 1970s attempting to recreate the “good old days” of their youth.
Certainly the events (and their treatment by the media) are rhyming with those days. (Yes, I grew up then myself, but with sane parents in a sane town. Eerily similar.)
Just as the ‘climate’ crisis is slowly dying, and just in time, the Leftists have wheeled out the new Shibboleth of the Covid Crisis and Lockdowns. After 40 years of failed predictions of the imminent end of the world caused by CO2,fading public attention is swivelled to Covid-19. This new fear is driving people to pills, drink and suicide just as effectively, but may not last as long. In both cases politicians have grasped entirely the wrong end of the stick and are wielding it to cause much destruction to people.
Connected to an explanation of why psychologists are not going to cure the anxiety felt by children and adults, I tried to link a 1980s ABC interview with a KGB defector who described the Soviet ideological subversion of America through the education system and what the result will be in years to come (like NOW!) Even ‘Social Justice’ was a term imbeded in the plan! It was a youtube video and my entire post vanished when I clicked it to post it!
The interview was a wide ranging hour and forty minutes, all very interesting, but the transformation of America to a marxist state was in the final 20minute segment which I found as a separate video. Its chilling in the accuracy of forecasted results.
https://www.westernjournal.com/every-american-see-interview-kgb-defector-knew-exactly-left-america/
Yes, this has been a long time coming. Those who seek to undermine our personal freedoms have been working hard at accomplishing that goal for many years, and in the process have created many new marxist believers with which we now have to contend.
Now that their nefarious goals have become clear, the Right has been galvanized and is starting to push back. Too little, too late? Time will tell.
The climate crisis narrative is clinical psychotic delusion.
Without WUWT or a very good education, most people would have a hard time sorting out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to climate change science.
Most people are dependent on what they hear out of the news media, and that’s the problem when it comes to a technical issue like human-caused climate change.
The fearful are not mentally ill, they are just being fed the wrong information and don’t realize it. And it is not easy to convince them they are getting it wrong, when the majority of Society’s opinion makers are on the side of human-caused climate change being real and dangerous.
A what the hell. My government has already officially classified this former SF solder as an “extremist” and potential terrorist threat. I fit two out of the their three criteria.
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Everyone who isn’t a radical Democrat fits that classification.
I just wonder how far Biden and the radical Left think they can push this hateful domestic terroirsm concept? They might be outnumbered when it comes to radical Democrats versus the Rest of Us. There’s a good chance they are. They should think about that.
“we might be concerned about an issue, but we don’t realize how many other people are also concerned” Really? With all the hype made by politicians, movie stars, media, academia about this issue you can’t honestly think anyone on the left thinks they are the only one really believing this is a serious issue. The left is not very smart at understanding human nature and how people, who are not hard-core lefties, function.
I think there will need to be climate change POLICY crimes against humanity trials.
People who have led children to commit suicide shall get the Mussolini treatment.
Yes, a Reckoning is due. This Human-caused Climate Change lie has cost humanity dearly.
All except that “crazy uncle” who follows climate denial websites like WUWT ! 😉
it will take a LOT of years to remove the brainwashing kids have copped for the last 40+ yrs
I speak as a kid whos life was ruined BY the same mob of pschycopaths when I was a teen at highschool and copped the have no kids you have no future etc spiel BY govt approved ngos and teachers
“Driving” pun intended?
The Chinese don’t teach their children about climate catastrophe so there’s over 1 billion that will be ok.
It’s just unfortunate they have a despotic cruel CCP to contend with who really don’t care about them.