Essay by Eric Worrall
“… I had to tell them something that would wake them up.”
To Address Climate Change, This Psychiatrist Goes Where No One Has Gone Before
November 29, 2022
H. Steven Moffic, MDPsychiatry and inner space—closer than you think.
PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS
In my November 15, 2022, column, “I SCREAM for More Climate Action!” I bemoaned the slowness of society and psychiatry to help reduce climate change and instability. I asked for creative ways to obtain climate attention. I found one by serendipity.
While writing what became the column “A Day of Launching Dreams and Nightmares,” I had CNN on in the background. I was catching a bit about someone who was flying balloons around the earth to save fossil fuel. Then he was being interviewed and I stopped writing to listen. To my great surprise, he was also identified as a Swedish psychiatrist: Bertrand Piccard, MD. I had never heard of him.
… In 1999, Bertrand made history with the first nonstop balloon flight around the world, topping that in 2016 when he did the same with a solar-powered airplane.
…
“My experience as a psychiatrist is that you have to speak the language of the people you want to convince. . . I had to tell them something that would wake them up.”
…
Read more: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/to-address-climate-change-this-psychiatrist-goes-where-no-one-has-gone-before
I’ve got to admit, there is something catchy about the vision of psychiatrists riding balloons around the planet shouting to everyone to wake up about climate change.
I thought of making a wisecrack about cutting back on participation in psychotropic drug trials, but I believe the real culprit is CNN.
The author admitted CNN was on in the background when inspiration struck. Think about the psychological damage watching and listening to CNN all day might cause. Perhaps the distress caused by constant exposure to CNN sometimes leads to deep rooted fantasies of running away and leaving the planet, even when CNN is just playing as background noise.
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Bertrand Piccard’s Solar Plane, May 15th, 2013
Looks like a glider. Not the kind of plane to fly in rough weather. One wonders just how long those propellers actually work in a headwind.
Not ready for commercial travel!
Not a drop of fuel in it. But to make only the panels tons of earth and rock had to be processed by burning tons of coal, not to speak of the acid lakes polluting the landscape.
But it works great for propelling a single passenger/pilot around the globe at an average of 30 mph over 5 months (just fly with the wind and not against it). Just think, if you beef up the plane enough to add a second passenger you could double your crazy for twice the cost and still be totally inefficient
It took him and his buddy 14 months to fly around the world in that plane.
5 months excludes time sitting on the ground trying to make repairs
There was a time when psychiatrists were the brightest pin in the MD box. Not anymore. Managed care reimbursement is rooted in completed procedures, which stripped a great deal of reimbursement from psychiatrists. In 30 years, psychists went from some of the highest paid docs to some of the lowest paid. This is part of the reason there is a shortage of psychiatrists. Now, much psychiatric care is provided by prescribing Master’s RN’s and PA’s.
In the old days, psychiatrists working with patients would not have engaged in flamboyant public behavior due to transference issues with the patients they are working with. It would have been seen as potentially counter-therapeutic. The last thing a psychiatrist wants to do is decompensate a their patients level of functioning by their public behavior.
The actual content of this psychiatrist’s public behavior and motivation isn’t worth commenting on… just silly.