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With the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Democrats in Congress, presidential candidates, and the entire left-wing media telling us that we only have a little more than a decade before our man-made climate issues will destroy the planet, is it any wonder that the more gullible among us are starting to feel some angst over the prospect of a coming dead Earth?
After all, Greta Thunberg, the Swedish 16-year-old, daughter of an opera singer and an actor, was so affected by climate hysteria that she stopped going to school and became a leading climate-change activist. She is currently on a world tour, which includes speaking to climate groups and shaming U.S. politicians into doing more to fight the scourge of man-made climate change.
While young Greta has been able to turn her “depression” over climate change into a fun new career, the average climate hysteric doesn’t always have that option. And so, new pop psychiatry groups are springing up all over.
“There’s not really a space, I don’t think, for people to talk about these feelings,” said Debbie Chang, a volunteer with the D.C. chapter of Citizen’s Climate Lobby. “People don’t want to dwell on negative emotions, but people want to be heard and validated.”
In May, Chang led a gathering of those poor, frustrated, climate hysteric, souls. Attendees were asked to write down their feelings about the issue, discuss those feelings in small groups, and were encouraged to find coping mechanisms such as breathing exercises, yoga, and meditation. New age solutions for a new age “problem.”
“The idea is: there’s a lot of doom-and-gloom, and it’s important to remember what you’re working for. I think taking a moment to envision that is motivating,” Chang said.
“There’s a feeling that your anxiety or your feelings are going nowhere…. We’re locked in the warming, greenhouse gas will have effects for decades,” said Alex Trope of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance, a group that looks to create “climate aware therapists.”
“It’s the eleventh hour. People are going to feel that now,” Trope said.
Climate anxiety as a mental health disorder has reached full societal penetration, as the “disorder” now even has its own Alcoholics-Anonymous-style 10-step-program. Good Grief is an organization that describes itself as “ten steps to personal resilience and empowerment in a chaotic climate,” is a quickly-growing climate anxiety support group.
“We created the program we needed, and we’re kind of shocked with the level of growth,” said co-founder Laura Schmidt. “We’ve personally done ten rounds of the program with participants, and more meetings are happening beyond us. We know this is strong. It empowers people and takes away desperation.”
Something else that might “take away desperation” would be to actually study the science behind the alarmism. We are being told that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) — a tiny portion of atmospheric CO2 as a whole — is the main source of global warming, which leads to climate change. We’re told that the current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide of just above 400 parts per million (ppm) — less than one half of one percent of our atmosphere as a whole — is causing that warming. We’re never told that CO2 in concentrations under 150ppm would lead to the loss of all complex plant life on Earth.
We’re also not told is that climate is, literally, always changing. Climate is in a constant state of flux, regardless of man’s activities. And while carbon dioxide is much vilified, we’re not told that CO2 is necessary for life on the planet to exist owing to its vital role in photosynthesis. We’re only told that it’s a greenhouse gas and that the concentration of it is too high — even though we’re not told what the perfect amount of atmospheric CO2 is. We’re also not told what the perfect global temperature is, and why a warmer world wouldn’t be beneficial.
Then we are told that the only solutions to the problem lie with socialist government programs, which, among other things, will take away our easy access to fossil fuels and prevent third-world nations from acquiring fossil fuels, thus assuring that they stay impoverished. Some even want to take the meat from our dinner tables.
Oh, and those programs will cost untold trillions of dollars to implement.
Junk science has created the new psychiatric condition known as “eco-anxiety.” Is it any wonder that now junk psychiatry has arisen to deal with the problem?
Image: DisobeyArt via iStock / Getty Images Plus
