A story in The Washington Post (WaPo), titled Why we shouldn’t give in to climate despair, says some people are so upset over climate change they are suffering mental health issues labeled “climate despair.”
The article itself heaps on climate-change doom and gloom.
“Yes, the planet will get hotter. Sea levels will rise further. Extreme weather will worsen, and more people will suffer,” writes WaPo. “[M]ore people than ever could experience serious challenges to their mental health as a result.”
The article goes on to say,
“A nonprofit organization called the Good Grief Network, [created] a 10-step program inspired by the structure of Alcoholics Anonymous whose meetings provide ‘social and emotional support to people who feel overwhelmed about the state of the world,’ says it has reached over a thousand people in four years. Steps in the program range from accepting ‘the severity of the predicament’ to reinvesting ‘into meaningful efforts.’
“Young adults are among the groups most vulnerable to feelings of depression and anxiety related to climate change, said Leslie Davenport, a climate psychology educator and consultant who is a member of a directory of climate-aware therapists.”
All this is because of a modest rise in global average temperatures over the past 150 years, an increase well within the range of historic natural variation.
WaPo thinks some young people might need mental-health treatment to cope with climate change. If so, what they may in fact need treatment for is a disorder known as “catastrophizing.” Psychology Today defines it this way:
“Catastrophizing is a cognitive distortion that prompts people to jump to the worst possible conclusion, usually with very limited information or objective reason to despair. When a situation is upsetting, but not necessarily catastrophic, they still feel like they are in the midst of a crisis.”
What is missing from the mindset of people who think climate change poses “an existential threat” to people and the planet is the fact that the human condition is actually far better than it was 100 years ago.
Crop production has increased dramatically, the Earth has become greener thanks to the additional carbon dioxide man has out into the atmosphere, and thanks to climate change, human health is better than ever.
Also, climate-related deaths are also way down, approaching zero, as seen in the figure below.
These facts are something to feel good about.
Sadly, WaPo contributes to climate despair by ignoring the profound benefits a modestly warmer world has delivered and instead hypes climate catastrophe.
This is a betrayal of the paper’s journalistic mission to pursue the truth, and, apparently, is undermining the mental health of their readers.
Read more at Climate Realism
Re the so-called “the fact that the human condition is actually far better than it was 100 years ago”… yeah you can come to THAT conclusion IF you wittingly or unwittingly omit other true realities proving otherwise (ie refuting your “fact”) — read “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room –The Holocaustal Covid-19 Coronavirus Madness: A Sociological Perspective & Historical Assessment Of The Covid “Phenomenon”” by Rolf Hefti at https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html
Actually the climate has been changing so slowly that it takes networks of sophisticated sensors, decades to even detect it. Mankind does not even know what the optimum global climate actually is let alone how to achieve it. We have been warming up from the little ice age but there is no evidence that that warming is causing extreme weather events to be more frequent or more intense. The real problem is scaring people.
It seems to me that climate alarmism is an obsessive addition, which can be cured by forming or joining a chapter of Alarmists Anonymous. The program of twelve steps is elaborated in this article:
https://rclutz.com/2017/12/27/alarmists-anonymous/
https://rclutz.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/aa.png
whoops–“obsessive addiction”
The Washington Compost like the New York Slimes is your typical liberal Fake News Rag its no wonder Americans don’t trust the M.S. Media anymoe