Environment & Energy

phantom power

(25,966 posts) Fri Jul 10, 2015, 01:02 PM Jul 2015

Climate change causing Pre Traumatic Stress Disorder

Perhaps the most depressing—and important—story you should read this month is John H. Richardson's account in the print edition of this here magazine about the numerous American climate scientists who simply have given up trying to convince this country to ignore the oil-sodden yahoos in our public discourse—not to mention the various species of ignorami in our national legislature—and do something about the fact that the planet is slip-sliding toward oblivion. One guy got so harassed for telling the truth about the situation that he moved his family all the way to Denmark, and his assessment of the direness of the problem got him in trouble even there.

Among climate activists, gloom is building. Jim Driscoll of the National Institute for Peer Support just finished a study of a group of longtime activists whose most frequently reported feeling was sadness, followed by fear and anger. Dr. Lise Van Susteren, a practicing psychiatrist and graduate of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth slide-show training, calls this "pretraumatic" stress. "So many of us are exhibiting all the signs and symptoms of posttraumatic disorder—the anger, the panic, the obsessive intrusive thoughts." Leading activist Gillian Caldwell went public with her "climate trauma," as she called it, quitting the group she helped build and posting an article called "16 Tips for Avoiding Climate Burnout," in which she suggests compartmentalization: "Reinforce boundaries between professional work and personal life. It is very hard to switch from the riveting force of apocalyptic predictions at work to home, where the problems are petty by comparison."

And how was your morning?

Seriously, if the people who really know what they're talking about are shamed or frightened into silence, or run out of the avenues of power, bad policy choices are allowed to run free (See also: Iraq, Invasion and Occupation Of). This is the very bad end of the process of eliminating reason and learning from our public life.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a36337/climate-change-liars/

4 replies

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Highlight:

Climate change causing Pre Traumatic Stress Disorder (Original Post) phantom power Jul 2015 OP

It's probably worse for those old enough to have had the chance of averting it Scootaloo Jul 2015 #1

K&R pscot Jul 2015 #2

The voluminous comment thread to CP's article pscot Jul 2015 #3

Repugnant, Yeah. Ghost Dog Jul 2015 #4

Scootaloo

(25,699 posts)

1. It's probably worse for those old enough to have had the chance of averting it

Reply to phantom power (Original post)

Fri Jul 10, 2015, 01:38 PM

Jul 2015

There are some people who will have gone from a livable world with well-known environmental patterns, to... whatever comes next. I wonder how many will notice the change without having it pointed out to them, or if it's totally a boiled frog scenario.

Me? I was born just about when the situation was about to teeter off the table. That awkward period where everything was "If we make drastic changes right now we might dodge this bullet!" - and of course no changes were made. There was a brief hop that fossil fuel's peaking might drive up costs more than the market would bear, spurring new advances in energy technology.. .and it sort of did... we found ways to make fracking and tar sand extraction cheaper.

Interestingly it did follow the pattern of grief.

Denial: it can't be THAT bad. surely they're overestimating. It' not too late, we can pull hard and turn this right around!

Anger: well... Nope. These fucking silver spoon assholes who need a new gas-guzzling car every two years and air conditioning i ntheir tool shed all for low-low-low prices? These are the shit-heels that need to sufer, not me. Them and hteir fucking pinhead politicians that they elected.

Bargaining: Well... maybe if we make little trims here, and here, we can just get grazed by he bullet? Maybe we can come up with some sort of plan to mitigate hte worst of the incoming disaster?

Depression: Nope. I'm going to inherit a wasteland, and people younger than me are going to think mad Max is a nature documentary.

Acceptance: I wonder what that'll be like. It'll b e a very interesting thing to see unfold, surely.

It's done. There's nothing that can be done to fix it. All we can do now is watch it go and marvel at what we've wrought. Humanity will survive, one of a number of creatures. I do not think our civilization is going ot come with us.