From The Independent:
Plummeting insect numbers. A sixth mass extinction. Thinning of ice sheets. Sea level rise. Wildfires in California. Thawing Arctic permafrost. The full tragedy of climate change is unravelling before our eyes.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, we have 12 years to stop this catastrophe. Climate action has become part of the zeitgeist, yet global emissions keep inching up and reports of Earth’s ecosystems collapsing come thick and fast.
Donald Trump is still in denial.
In 1958 scientists first noticed levels of carbon dioxide creeping up. In the 1980s global temperatures began to rise but warnings were ignored and covered up. For most people, the first nail in the coffin came 40 years later with the 2018 IPCC report, which said we faced major environmental catastrophe within our lifetimes, and potentially as soon as 2040.
So far so blah, here's the fun part:
For many, the news was a bereavement – a calamity we engineered without knowing it. “You’re talking about a mix of confusing feelings, including depression, grief, rage, despair, hopelessness, guilt and shame. All of those feelings come with it,” says Caroline Hickman, a teaching fellow at the University of Bath and member of the Climate Psychology Alliance.
For many, these conflicted feelings are now part of daily life. The American Psychological Association describe this “chronic fear of environmental doom” as eco-anxiety.
Ms Hickman has been a psychotherapist for more than 20 years and before last year she had two or three patients at any one time with eco-anxiety.
“Pretty much everybody is referring to it now. Lots of people are saying they won’t have children. Other people say they don’t want to feel guilty about having a child and bringing it into a world where they know there’ll be lots of problems.
"One woman told me she fantasised about killing her child. In fact I’ve had eight women who have said that to me. These are women desperately thinking about how to protect their children. They’re talking about despair, impotence and powerlessness."
Debate Magazine
