Essay by Eric Worrall
East Anglia has a new counselling programme to help students who are struggling to eliminate plastic packaging and cook their own food, and other eco-anxiety related issues.
Climate change: Don’t let doom win, project tells worriers
By Georgina Rannard
BBC News Climate & ScienceA new project has been launched to address rising climate anxiety in students at the University of East Anglia.
At the opening in Norwich, students told BBC News they felt hopelessness, anger and despair about climate change.
They worry how they will live in a world with an unpredictable climate and the destruction of nature.
On Thursday a new survey found that 45% of UK students worry about climate change once a week or more.
Literature student Meg Watts, 22, said that she had experienced depression after being overwhelmed by the scale of problems facing the planet. And she sought therapy after developing disordered eating when trying to cut out food packaged with plastic.
The new programme was developed with mental health charity Norfolk and Waveney Mind, who realised young people were coming for counselling about their fears about climate change.
Common worries were about food security and whether or not to have children, explained Ruth Taylor from Mind. “Young people are trying to get ready for what is coming,” she suggests.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61218933
I experience a real WTF reaction when I read things like this.
For example, these eco-anxious students could grow their own green food, if they want to avoid plastic.
Britain has an allotment system, in which the local government leases a decent size patch of garden to poor people to grow vegetables. The lease cost is very affordable, from as low as £8 (US $10) / year.
The land parcels are usually around 250 square yards. This might not sound like a lot, but Britain has some of the most insanely fertile land in the world. I’m no expert gardener, yet I grew 100 square yards of vegetables in 2002 in Britain, and I didn’t have to buy any greens from the supermarket for 3 months. Half the tomatoes I grew were wasted because I couldn’t eat them all. Another year I grew a few rows of potatoes and pulled at least 20lb of potatoes out of the ground.
Yet one of the students quoted by the BBC couldn’t even make the transition away from pre-packaged food, to having to prepare her own meals.
I mean, how difficult and time consuming is preparing your own meals? She couldn’t bring herself to chop a few vegetables and some cheap chuck steak, grab a handful of barley or oats, and throw it all into a low cost electric slow cooker with some water and a stock cube first thing in the morning. 5 minutes preparation and you get a delicious meal at the end of the day, just waiting for you to eat it. She went hungry, instead of taking 5 minutes per day preparing healthy food which doesn’t come out of a plastic package.
On one hand I believe the distress and in some cases mental illness experienced is real, and I feel for anyone who experiences such issues, even if the cause of their distress is entirely imaginary. But someone who experiences an eating disorder because they can’t deal with having to prepare their own food, I mean these people are supposed to be young adults, aren’t they?
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Eco anxiety…try thinking about fishing and your favorite lake is still frozen. Let’s go global warming.. I need you to come through.
If they’re worried about plastics, they might think twice about wearing masks made of polypropylene microfibers.
For that matter, let’s recognize that masks, even N95, are not meant to stop viruses. So why wear them at all?
Surgeons wear masks to stop water droplets and bacteria from entering the patient. Their masks do nothing to stop viruses, but they have to talk while working and we all emit water droplets when we speak.
And, indeed, the surgical masks prevent proper breathing such that the oxygen concentration in the surgical theater is purposely increased to keep the doctors and nurses healthy and fully functional.
Got a citation for that comment about the O2 levels in operating theatres?
My anaesthetist mates have a totally different reason for very slightly higher O2 levels and its got nothing at all to do with surgeons masks….
One of the big risks in an operating theatre is a fire in an atmosphere which might be O2 enriched from leaking equipment. Often they use scavengers to keep O2 levels down. OHSA has very clear rules on acceptable O2 levels because of the risk.
“For that matter, let’s recognize that masks, even N95, are not meant to stop viruses. So why wear them at all?”
An N95 mask *will* stop the water droplet that a virus is encased in. The cloth masks you see most people wear are pretty much useless.
“And, indeed, the surgical masks prevent proper breathing”
Not so. At least in my case. I use an N95 mask when I push-mow my lawn and I breath just fine from beginning to end, unless I’m sweating a lot and my sweat soaks the mask and then it gets a little harder to breath. In that case, I put on a fresh, dry mask and continue mowing.
What about the viruses that aren’t in a water droplet? They get through the N95 mask. I just read a study but can’t find it right now.
Proper breathing with a mask is something that doesn’t need a study. Everybody knows from their own experience. I almost passed out the first time I had to wear a mask for an hour. Walking through a store shopping was very hard on me. I used to be a long distance runner and now cycle so it’s not my lungs.
As I said, I don’t practically pass out wearing an N95 mask. I do just fine wearing it even doing heavy labor. That’s my experience.
I have worked with biohazard, as well as hazardous wastes and materials. I have worn some type of respirator much of my career. First of all, cloth and surgical masks are not respirators. Many seem to treat them such. They do not protect the wearer’s airway. Only others from your exhalations. Second of all, as some who tests air quality and occasionally enters confined spaces, I have measured air quality under cloth masks. I have found when at rest, CO2 can be as high as 3500 ppm and over 5500 ppm under moderate excercise. O2 under masks I have found can easily drop below 19.5%, which is the action level to clear a confined space. People who wear PPE professionally are aware of similar hazards when wearing respirators but are oblivious they also occur with masks.
As I said, I don’t have any problems with wearing an N95 mask even during the most extensive periods of exercise. The only limit I find is when the mask gets wet from sweat and this reduces the airflow. In such a case, I get a fresh, dry mask and continue on with what I’m doing. So your observations don’t apply to me.
Tom, I regret to have given you a -1 mark, as I usually like your comments and agree with you.
But in this case your argument is your own experience, so it is legitimate to refer only to mine instead of less subjective means of evaluation. My experience is just the opposite of yours. I have been forced to put on a mask to go almost everywhere and that makes me suffer. Both because it is an obstacle to the flow of air, also because it warms the breath-in air. Suffocating (and that on top of my reduced cardiorespiratory functions). I ended up cheating: let my beard grow wildly so that it pushes the mask away and thus lets most of the air circulation be freer by going through the borders.
I don’t doubt that masks affect people in different ways depending on one’s physical condition.
If you grow a beard then you are defeating the purpose of the N95 mask.
The cloth masks that are open at the sides are useless because they let air circulate around the borders of the mask.
Don’t worry about the downvote. People are very sensitive about talking about masks for a whole lot of reasons.
In that case, I put on a fresh, dry mask and continue mowing.
Fresh, dry mask…
Exactly.
Incorrectly worn PPE is often worse than no PPE. PPE is also right at the bottom of the lists of things to do to remove risk.
(solution 1 – remove the problem entire and all the risk goes away)
By instructing on use of PPE you are basically admitting you have not done anything else to reduce risk and that people will just have to deal with it.
PPE however give wearers what can be a false sense of safety. They assume the PPE has solved the problem and hence they do not have to take any other action, or that PPE is the only solution.
So if you are wearing PPE wrong and also have that mind set… yeah… not a good thing.
Masks – in the context of our subject – are a temporary item intended to be replaced regularly. If you are not replacing them they are just collecting foreign objects and storing them nice and close to your nose and mouth in a nice warm and moist environment.
It may stop a droplet. But droplets break down the masks are not waterproof.
“Surgeons wear masks to stop water droplets and bacteria from entering the patient.”. Surgeons wear surgical masks to stop snot, nosehairs and spittle from entering the patient.
To prevent infectious agent transmission from surgeon to patient, an enclosed air fed hood-helmet is worn.
But that plastic is saving other peoples lives … because you’re walking around spreading your asymptomatic COVID by breathing in public. Masks SAVE LIVES!! I know this, because Dr. Birx said so … then dropped her mask when the cameras were off.
250 Square yards = 2250 Square feet, almost 50 ft x 50 ft, is a very substantial garden. Perhaps you meant 250 square feet? These students have been horribly abused by both climate alarmists and their teachers that failed to educate them in any critical thinking skills. A feature, not a bug, I fear.
Actually…
(I assume that the allotment is one per household, not for each individual in it; this is just about the size of my entire house lot here in the US.)
My garden is almost twice that large. ANd yes, it is a bit of a chore to keep it up, keep it weeded. Almost takes the fun out of it. What gives me the most anziety, food-wise, is unripe fruit that fills the grocery stores. Fruit should be firm, not hard as baseballs, and be aromatic. SELDOM is that the case with grocery store fruits. LOVE my garden ripened tomatoes, melons, berries, and more.
“What gives me the most anziety, food-wise, is unripe fruit that fills the grocery stores. Fruit should be firm, not hard as baseballs, and be aromatic. SELDOM is that the case with grocery store fruits.”
Fruit is often picked somewhat green in order to lengthen its shelf life. I agree it’s not ideal, but the alternative is more food waste.
As a kid we used to have food preserving days to store the veges. Dad had a very large vege garden, nearly 20m by 15m. So much compost was made from the chooks and truck loads of cow manure we brought home from the farm that the level of the garden was about 50cm higher than the rest of the yard.
Your whole garden was a raised bed. 🙂
“LOVE my garden ripened tomatoes, melons, berries, and more.”
There is nothing better than fresh vegetables from your own garden.
250 square yards would be 50 yards by 50 yards or about a half acre. It would be best to have a good sized root cellar to store it all.
50 x 50 = 2500
I would definitely pay AUD15.00 per year for that kind of farming spread! It literally sounds too good to be true. Corn, tomatoes, squash, kale, beans, and hey, in Sydney even more exotic stuff will grow! They don’t know how good they have it, and still they are sad. And that is very sad for someone who would relish such an opportunity.
I wonder how well represented STEM students are in this eco-anxiety group? They seem to all be arts and humanities students.
God help us all.
These nitwits either need to be taught some history or they need to spend a couple of months in a new BBC-sponsored reality television programme “Dark Age Farmers.”
I see a scene from Wooster and Jeeves, Wooster opened a thick cookbook at a page “Tea: a preparation thereof”.
The deep look of concentration while he was doing that 🙂
These people have been denied the satisfaction of doing something for themselves and getting the reward for their labors. They are in no way ready to enter the real world. And while I may show some empathy for their plight, I must remind all that the core of the problem lies with their parenting.
They are still children, and will remain so till the end of their lives.
Come on, man. Meg Watts is ready to go out into the world and solve problems with her degree in “literature”. What could be more helpful when trying to grow food without fertilizer than knowing what the subtleties of Tom Jones?
These students have probably never seen their parents prepare fresh food. So you can hardly blame them for ignorance. But there is plenty of stuff available on line that can show them how to do simple cooking. Alternatively why did East Anglia not organise some cooking classes?
The schools would prefer to teach grievance struggles, rather than home ec.
The professors need to know how to cook in order to teach it!
Perhaps UEA should equip all rooms in the halls of residence with a haybox and an osokool. A year or two of feeding themselves like their great grandparents did might refocus the poor snowflakes.
The bs they are feed everyday I am surprised that most of them have not quit this world
probably the biggest cause of suicides going up.
Just out of curiosity, isn’t this the same place that lost its climate data, so peer review of their conclusions was impossible?
SHEEEESSSHHHH! Idiocy tuned to a new, higher frequency! How are we to take these snowflakes seriously?
A bunch of idiots looking for something to be anxious about.
Unfortunately, Eric Worrall makes mistakes.
“these eco-anxious students could grow their own green food”
Eric starts with an assumption these college student are capable of more than whining, complaining, and getting offended. Big mistake.
These virtue-signaling brats could not grow a garden for the life of them.
“I mean, how difficult and time consuming is preparing your own meals?”
Now, we all know it is not difficult, many of us consider it to be a life skill.
Still, it is way above their skill set.
“some cheap chuck steak”
This is off the menu, cows make methane. Bad, bad, bad.
“low cost electric slow cooker”
Electric, as in electricity. Likely generated by burning *coal*, or worse, {Gasp!} nuclear.
It is enough to give one anxiety just thinking about it.
“I mean these people are supposed to be young adults, aren’t they?”
Keyword: supposed.
The future is not in good hands.
They could become compost, then they’d be useful, for the first time.
Yeah, you got me on the cow meat 🙂
I had a college roommate who had to be shown how to make a sandwich.
Regarding cows, these people are quite likely vegan.
Welcome to Wokeness.
The youth of today believe they know a lot … but in practicality know almost NOTHING. Nothing practical or REAL in their dreary ‘frightened’ existences. Eric … you are so spot on. How hard can it be ?
Things are different today”
I hear ev’ry mother say
Cooking fresh food for a husband’s just a drag
So she buys an instant cake
And she burns a frozen steak
and goes running for the shelter of an eating disorder
This is even a sadder development for these kids because they are so badly misinformed about climate change. We have no control over climate, CO2 is plant food, and warmer climate means everybody has a better life. It is cold that kills. Poor misinformed blighters/snowflakes.
These kids believe the first thing they are told and won’t do a simple web search to check out if there is another side to the story. They don’t because they’re too intellectually lazy. And that is why I don’t feel sorry for them.
I discovered this website because what I was hearing simply made no sense and I was looking for the other side of the story.
“These kids believe the first thing they are told and won’t do a simple web search to check out if there is another side to the story. They don’t because they’re too intellectually lazy.”
I agree. How hard is it for this internet generation to find the other side of the story?
Maybe many of them do find the other side of the story. Maybe that’s why “climate change” is always at the bottom of polls.
And another question is: How hard is it for politicians and media types to find the other side of the CO2 crisis story? Apparently Trump is the only politician who is interested in the other side of the story.
The best advice I could give the 22 year old Literature Student is for her to get out of the University and get a real job requiring the practical application of basic skills. Meet a broader range of people having real life issues, not pampered children in the childhood-extending environment of academia. Get a real man as a lover and potential husband, not some snowflake mental masturbator. It has been shown that married people are a lot happier.
I’m reminded of a time just after I started going out with my current wife. We were at a party in the house of one of her friends I hadn’t met before then. We were talking with a group of women and one of them complained about not being able to meet a suitable man. I asked her what she was looking for in a man. She listed a series of traits she was looking for including sensitive, willingness to talk about and share feelings, an interest in things she was interested in & etc. I finally stated that she was not looking for a man. On the contrary she was looking for a girlfriend. That was the first of many mistakes I’ve made with my wife.
“I finally stated that she was not looking for a man. On the contrary she was looking for a girlfriend. That was the first of many mistakes I’ve made with my wife.”
Your comment may have been impolitic, but I don’t think you were entirely wrong. I’m a woman, by the way.
Thanks, MM. My future wife agreed with my assessment, but she was mad that I’d pissed off her, acknowledged, tight-assed friend (no sense of humor along with other issues that are still present). I assume you have friends like that?
While my wife is the master of my universe, over time she has come to see some things as I do. This is remarkable given her Leftist family and acquaintances’ backgrounds.
That’s right, let’s beat up the kids.
While claiming to ‘care’
no no no
It’s the brain-dead yet wildly, impossibly pretentious and self-important teachers we should be beating up.
“If you can’t do anything else or useful, teach”
Communists thro and thro and thro who, relentlessly claim to care for the kids yet are guilty of nothing of the sort.
They only care for themselves and by turning their charges to mental mush. make their (haha) professional lives so much easier
(Mencken’s hobgoblins, applies all over the place)
You know the ones, the ones who know:
And they know all about these things because their friends all know about those things. And their friends know. etc etc etc
Some of the very best friends anyone can have are called = Sputnik and Super-Computer
While nobody ever goes to check the actual source or the original information/experiments.
Fortunately there’s none of those around here
The Pink Floyd had it sussed a long time ago, starting with
‘Dark Side’ ## and then “The Wall
##
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home-town….
Waiting for someone to show you the way.
And then one day you find…
Ten years have got behind you.
No-one told you when to run…..
You missed the starting gun.
Speaking of ‘ground:
UK allotments were classically either ‘Full size’ or Half size
A Full Size allotment plot measured one pole by eight poles
i.e. Five and a half yards by 44 yards (2 chains)
A Half size plot being one pole by four poles
A ‘chain’ being the length of a cricket pitch
An acre being defined as 40 poles long and 4 poles wide
Poles sometimes equally called Rods
Norwich students haven’t a hope in hell of getting one, note the small number available and the waiting list
https://allotments.norwich.gov.uk/
The University is situate on the left central side of the white area on that map
Further research will tell you that The Acre came about as the size a typical Ox could plough in a single day.
A lot like University teachers in that the Oxen only worked in the morning, rested in the afternoon then went down the pub in the evening
UK has a Prime Minister who works like that, ‘cept he needs pre-pub warm-up parties in the afternoon as well.
Soooooo immensly dedicated to his job and his ‘children’
The UK really is running like a “Well-oiled
machinemuppet”A significant health benefit from ‘acres’ came from having to walk/trudge 11 miles in order to plough that one acre.
And not very least, from the bacteria you got inside you while doing that work and subsequently eating the food.
[especially the ox when you’d finished]
Are they called ‘B vitamins’ because many of them are derived from ‘Bacteria’ (Most especially B12 = prevents Alzheimer’s)
Is that what they are: Bacteria Vitamins = the ones that look after all your nerve and brain cells = Brain Vitamins?
Nerves & brains: they’re all exactly the same in reality
Missed the edit to PS
Which brings us Full Circle or The Wrap – Plastic Wrap especially..
i.e. You don’t find bacteria in pre-packaged food
Hence why our students’ minds are turning to mush.
(And many other peeps’ minds too.
OMG: is that Brandon = The Plastic President)
“ (Most especially B12 = prevents Alzheimer’s)”
I’m not sure you’re taking enough.
I’m sorry but I have no sympathy for these indoctrinated, non thinking, spoiled miscreants. I wouldn’t do a damn thing for them other than give them a good ass chewing. The whole educational system on the other hand needs to be fired and taken to the wood shed. It is an utter failure.
I’d blame the adults as they are the ones creating the environment that cause these children to
behave as they do. Their behavior is the result of these nasty, misguided adults. These children
have no prior experience by which they can judge their behavior & because they are children. may
not have the self-control & maturity to even do the right thing if they knew what that was.
Old Man Winter, I may have miss read this but my understanding was that we are talking about students at university. If that is the case it is past time for them to buck up and face reality, they are no longer children they are young adults. Inexperienced young adults but young adults never the less.
“The whole educational system on the other hand needs to be fired and taken to the wood shed. It is an utter failure.”
The educational system failed because they stopped teaching children how to think & started
teaching them what to think which guarantees they can be easily brainwashed. That’s why you & I
can analyze it to see what’s wrong. The kids, on the other hand, can’t do that.
“The whole educational system on the other hand needs to be fired and taken to the wood shed. It is an utter failure.”
Yes. I think we are at that point. Out with the old, and in with the new. As soon as possible.
There is a problem. These youngsters have not grown up yet. Maybe their surroundings were too soft, to far from the real world, so that they became snowflakes.
Here is “Meg Watts, literature student, aged 22” suffering from delicate anxiety.
At age 18, the product of a more realistic schooling, I was flying military aircraft and studying for a degree in aeronautical engineering. The difference is stark. GeoffS
Yes Geoff. At 22 I was a navy fighter pilot, & had almost paid off my first house
The advantage we had was productive parents with good values who created an environment in
which we grew to be capable adults. Society, as a whole, was like that, too, as these same values
were everywhere through & through. The expectations were higher but the training we got was good
enough to produce those results. It wasn’t a bridge too far.
I might add that our parents trusted the quality of their work as when we left home, we were
on our own. They weren’t calling us daily to see how we were doing. They figured they gave
us the tools we’d need to make it on our own & had enough of the “right stuff” to be able
to deal with whatever we faced. They let us try & learn- the school of hard knocks. That is
probably how our grandparents treated them, too.
I found a quote from “Due South” (S01E10, 40:25), where Benton Fraser says this, which
probably encapsulates what our parents did in raising us:
There’s only one thing a father needs to leave his son & that’s a good example
of how a man should live his life. Anything else, the son can learn for himself. The
greatest gift my father ever gave me was the courage to trust in my own abilities &
I learned that through his example. You can give your son anything you want but if
you don’t leave him a good example of how to be a man, you’ll leave him nothing.
I think what they taught us was to be people of principle & integrity & to never give up,
to persevere to the very end.
Guys I have to disagree. Back then the world was filled with incompetent, foolish, and crimally minded people. It always has been. Lots of bigots of all types, including a wide variety of skin color. Yes, life is easier now, which allows the incapable a fine life. Yet, the greater difference between then and now is that the incompetent, foolish and criminally minded have gained a great deal of power and control.
You’re absolutely right. The world has always been unstable & with Pareto analysis,
80% pf the problems are caused by 20% of the people. It wasn’t just one #@ur momisugly!$#$ in
every crowd, it was a lot more of the crowd. And now that smaller group has much
more power to push things their way.
I was talking more on a personal level. Geoff & Hasbeen were doing what they did
cuz obviously there were really good people providing really leadership & training for
them to have been able to do what they did. They had enough of the “right stuff”.
Give someone a fish and you feed them for a day.
Teach someone to fish and they feed themselves for a lifetime.
Teach someone that it’s immoral to fish and they are worse off than before.
Maxim 21:”Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take his fish away and tell him he’s lucky to be alive and he’ll figure out a way to catch another one for you to take tomorrow.”
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Don’t teach a man to fish, and you feed yourself.
He’s a grown man. Fishing’s not that hard.”
– Ron Swanson
Ah those halcyon bygone days of calm predictable weather and before nature had been ruined by ugly man-made materials.
Fresh tomatoes can be frozen whole. When thawing out, punch a few holes in the tomato to drain.
As to the students, well… not the brightest stars in the sky.
Roast in olive oil, then freeze
Last perfectly with intense flavour.
JF
tomato relish/paste/sauce/dehydrated bottled chunks or whole
no excuse to waste a morsel
Thanks for the tips
We used to freeze them whole, then pop them (still frozen) into boiling water when we wanted to cook with them; it took the skins right off and we had perfect peeled tomatoes.
Being nightshades, tomatoes contain lectins, natural pesticides that will irritate your system if consumed in significant amounts. They’re most concentrated in the skin and seeds. So peel and seed before eating. Your gut will thank you. 🙂
Love tomatoes but if eaten at dinner time they seem to keep me from getting to sleep.
“East Anglia has a new counselling programme to help students who are struggling to eliminate plastic packaging and cook their own food, and other eco-anxiety related issues.”
I’m guessing these students are the ones who failed, and didn’t get the handful of mud and a kick in the head.
Don’t worry a world war should teach these snowflakes what they really need to worry about. If climate change anxiety is even on your list of worries you are leading a very sheltered life and need to go out and get a life.
My wife and I cook from scratch everyday and the kids 12 and 15 help and learn
I make sourdough bread, sausage, bacon, burgers (from coarse ground brisket), Chinese dumplings, etc.
Plus we garden
Nothing more useful than a Kitchen Aid, a vacuum sealer and a freezer.
My kids will have all the skills when they move out.
What they’re doing to our children is criminal in two ways. First, they’re setting a perfectionist
standard for environmental concerns that no one can attain. We’re alive, thus we pollute. Secondly,
they’re destroying any hope for a future which causes depression & removes any reason to get up
in the morning. A person without hope is a dead man walking. Under these conditions, we would
all become neurotic & eventually crack. Pressing children to such inhumane standards for the sake
of a cause is nothing but verbal torture- the downside to zealotry. It’s barbaric!
You must not encourage them to use energy to cook their food. Eating it raw is much more eco-friendly. Seriously though. Don’t these idiots have parents? Send them back home to (probably equally useless) mummy and daddy until they grow up enough to go to Kindergarten unsupervised.