ABC News: Mitigate Climate Anxiety by Convincing Neighbours to Give UP Their Lawns

Essay by Eric Worrall

Don’t forget the lightning bugs.

Climate change takes an emotional toll. Here’s how to manage anxiety

Anxiety, grief, sadness, anger

By LEANNE ITALIE AP lifestyles writer
June 25, 2025, 2:00 PM

NEW YORK — Anxiety, grief, anger, fear, helplessness. The emotional toll of climate change is broad-ranging, especially for young people.

Activists, climate psychologists and others in the fight against climate change have a range of ways to build resilience and help manage emotions. Some ideas:

Feeling isolated? Find ways to connect with like-minded people and help nature, said climate psychologist Laura Robinson in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There are many ways to get involved.

Work locally to convince more residents to give up grass lawns and increase biodiversity with native plants, for instance. Help establish new green spaces, join projects to protect water, develop wildlife corridors, or decrease pesticide use to save frogs, insects and birds. Work to get the word out on turning down nighttime lighting to help birds and lightning bugs.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/wireStory/climate-change-takes-emotional-toll-manage-anxiety-build-123181446

You could suggest climate panicked kids try all of this. Or you could try demanding teachers focus on providing an education, instead of stoking adolescent climate anxiety and mental illness with a nonstop stream of toxic green propaganda.

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Tom Halla
June 27, 2025 2:05 pm

Actually teaching the ankle biters science would help. “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts” Richard Feynman.

Bryan A
June 27, 2025 2:06 pm

Lawns may require occasional maintenance like…
Watering
Weeding
Raking
Fertilizing
Cutting
That rock doesn’t… But…
Lawns sink CO2 by growing grass (rocks don’t)
And the trimmings can be composted into new rich topsoil

cgh
June 27, 2025 2:11 pm

Let me guess: it never occurs to dimwits like Leanne that SHE is the source of “anxiety, grief, sadness, anger.”

When school curricula become filled with insane, irrational religious dogma, the results are never good.

Scissor
Reply to  cgh
June 27, 2025 3:15 pm

Poison sumac and ivy are native plants in Michigan, at least around Ann Arbor.

Retiredinky
Reply to  Scissor
June 28, 2025 11:04 am

The bain in Western Kentucky yards is yellow nutsedge – hard to get rid of and spreads like crazy. And I replied to this because I have a grass yard with numerous flower beds which I love. I sat this morning and watched and heard numerous birds and squirrels enjoy the yard. Grass yards can be good.

mleskovarsocalrrcom
June 27, 2025 2:25 pm

Just when you think they’ve run out of steam ………..

MrGrimNasty
June 27, 2025 2:26 pm

My lawn is neat and tidy but it is still home to earthworms, slugs, flatworms, woodlice, leather jackets, lawn shrimp, ants, solitary bees, numerous fungi, clover, daisies, self-heal, dandelions, plantain; it feeds numerous different species of birds, frogs, newts, hedgehogs, woodmice……

And I doubt that’s even a fraction of what’s there.

Scissor
Reply to  MrGrimNasty
June 27, 2025 3:18 pm

In Michigan, lawn sprinkler systems were relatively rare. Here in Colorado they are just about a necessity to grow a lawn. I plan to shrink my lawn to reduce water bills.

ResourceGuy
Reply to  Scissor
June 27, 2025 5:49 pm

And one way to speed up the overreach agenda is to use leftists on the water boards to turn the screws on water rates for sprinkler meter users.

oeman50
Reply to  ResourceGuy
June 28, 2025 5:11 am

So you are proposing to water board the water rates?

Edward Katz
June 27, 2025 2:27 pm

The teachers can’t help it when they’re forced to throw the alarmist propaganda contained by state/provincial curriculums at their students.

Ed Zuiderwijk
June 27, 2025 2:33 pm

A lifestyles writer. Is that a kind of ink pen?

J Boles
June 27, 2025 3:14 pm

Maybe lots of people PRETEND to care about CC for social acceptance, but they use FF every day, every day, non stop, so do not tell me (ABC news) they care when they use FF every minute of every day.

June 27, 2025 3:43 pm

Work locally to convince more residents to give up grass lawns and increase biodiversity with native plants, for instance.”

Well, the neighbors think I’ve already given up on a grass lawn. If I sprayed a weed killer on my lawn, there’d be no green left.
If they spent all that money to geoengineer a weed that only grew to a couple of inches tall, I’d plant it and never need to mow again!
(Are dandelions native to Ohio? If they flowered at only 1 or 2 inches high, I wouldn’t mind a yellow lawn.)

SwedeTex
June 27, 2025 5:59 pm

WTH (heck instead of F) is a climate psychologist? Probably also known as a climate witch doctor.

Reply to  SwedeTex
June 28, 2025 9:53 am

Someone who prepares taxpayers for a visit from a climate proctologist?

John Hultquist
June 27, 2025 7:36 pm

If there is “climate change” a person needs to find out what the new climate will be and then plant vegetation that is native to that new regime. If you plant currently native plants, will they not struggle and possibly die? What am I missing or maybe the AP lifestyles writer’s elevator doesn’t go to the top floor? 🤔

Mason
Reply to  John Hultquist
June 28, 2025 1:07 pm

Or the lights are on and nobody is home!

June 27, 2025 8:30 pm

Work locally to convince more residents to give up grass lawns and increase biodiversity with native plants, for instance.”

The magazine “New Shelter” (Rodale Press) suggested this in the early 1980’s. Several readers in the mid-west reported what happened when they tried it. Their local city councils declared their ‘native plants’ to be ‘an eyesore’ and, “Get that lawn back in there, or face a fine.”

Reply to  Tombstone Gabby
June 28, 2025 11:18 pm

Our Homeowners’ Association would do the same.

Roger Bournival
June 27, 2025 8:39 pm

Help establish new green spaces

Great idea – get rid of my grass lawn and watch crabgrass and dandelions take over. Behold, the new green space!

June 28, 2025 2:39 am

Feeling isolated? Find ways to connect with like-minded people 

…and join an echo chamber where you never need to think for yourself ever again.

June 28, 2025 2:48 am

The Forest of Dean Green Party propose a rather more authoritarian approach. This from their manifesto:

8 Promote and develop local ‘Land Share’
schemes with the goal of ensuring that
gardens that cannot be maintained by
householders become local assets rather
than eyesores.

I often fear that if I let the grass grow more than they approve, I will wake up one morning to find my lawn has been dug up and planted with beans.

Ronald J Strah
June 28, 2025 5:30 am

I’m doing my part by bottling all my farts. Now, WTF should I do with all the bottles in my garage?

June 28, 2025 5:45 am

An intervention, that’s what’s needed.

June 28, 2025 5:48 am

Plant a xeriscape lawn and garden. Use native plants in landscaping to reduce use of resources.

June 28, 2025 5:55 am

“Work to get the word out on turning down nighttime lighting to help burglars”

That’s more like it.

i’ve got lots of native plants in my garden. Most of them are called grass.

Some people are getting in a stew about the climate because of all the lies told by MSM.

ResourceGuy
June 28, 2025 7:17 am

Get your oil based astroturf carpet larn instead.

Bob
June 28, 2025 7:11 pm

Yeah, I don’t much care for Leanne and her kind.

June 28, 2025 11:27 pm

I suspect she lives in the city. She should persuade the NY government to tear out all the grass in Central Park

Completely OT. We are currently in Krakow and all the teasers for the ads are in Polish. WUWT is helping me learn the local language. Thank you.

June 29, 2025 1:08 am

Or plead with them to give up any idea of having an EV, so as to avoid both of you suffering the threat of battery fires destroying both of your houses. Peril comes in many forms but encouraging artificial ones is not to be encouraged.