Links tagged “psychological”

Ocasio-Cortez: “I want you clothed, I want you educated, I want you paid a living wage, no ifs ands or buts. And what that also means — and what Naomi talked about as well — is directly, consciously, combating white supremacy in the United States of America.” 

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Flashback: Identity politics invades climate change debate

Michael Shellenberger: "Part of what inspired me to write that column is that I am concerned by the rising eco-anxiety among young people. My daughter is 14 years old. While she herself is not scared, in part because I have explained the science to her, she told me many of her peers are." ...

"I wanted to know what Extinction Rebellion was basing its apocalyptic claims upon, and so I interviewed its main spokesperson, Sarah Lunnon...“It’s not Sarah Lunnon saying billions of people are going to die,” Lunnon told me. ”The science is saying we’re headed to 4 degrees warming and people like Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Center and Johan Rockström from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research are saying that such a temperature rise is incompatible with civilized life....

Has anyone, I asked, done a study of what happens to food production at 4 degrees warming? “That’s a good question,” said Rockström, who is an agronomist. “I must admit I have not seen a study. It seems like such an interesting and important question.” In fact, scientists, including two of Rockström’s colleagues at the Potsdam Institute, recently modeled food production.Their main finding was that climate change policies are more likely to hurt food production and worsen rural poverty than climate change itself, even at 4 to 5 degrees warming. The “climate policies” the authors refer to are ones that would make energy more expensive and result in more bioenergy (the burning of biofuels and biomass), which would increase land scarcity and drive up food costs..."

"In other words, the problems from sea level rise that Oppenheimer is calling “unmanageable” are situations like the ones that already occur, such as in the days following Hurricane Katrina, where societies become temporarily difficult to manage. (Katrina killed over 1,800)." ...

"But it’s clear that there is simply no science that supports claims that rising sea levels threaten civilization much less the apocalypse." ...

"Several people asked me about climate “tipping points,” such as the collapse of ice sheets from Antarctica and Greenland, the escape of methane gas from melting tundra, the slowing of circulation in the Atlantic ocean, and the drying out and burning up of the Amazon. In response I pointed out that nowhere does IPCC predict any of those things would be catastrophic to human civilization much less apocalyptic.

If the Greenland ice sheet were to completely disintegrate, sea levels would rise by seven meters, but over a 1,000-year period. Even if temperatures rose 6° Celsius, the Greenland ice sheet would lose just 10% of its volume over 400 to 500 years."

I was surprised to be asked whether some amount of exaggeration about climate change wasn’t necessary to grab people’s attention. My response was, “Not if journalists and scientists hope for any trust with the public.” I asked Jeffrey how she would answer such a question. “Raising awareness of an issue is important,” she said, “but there’s a difference between raising awareness and telling children younger than myself that they might not grow up. Climate fear-mongering has become very child-aimed. I see a lot of mental health issues and fatalism.”

Hickman agrees that uncertainty is intolerable for human beings because we feel out of control “To deal with that loss of control,” she says, “we project into the future, sometimes into apocalyptic thinking”—which is why some children in the U.K. believe they will die in the next few years as a result of climate change, or why parents worry about full societal collapse within a couple of decades. That’s a time scale most climate scientists say is unlikely in Western Europe.

'Support groups are growing around the country as activists seek to stay engaged while grappling with feelings of frustration and hopelessness.'

Protests by groups such as Extinction Rebellion, the recent fires in the Amazon and apocalyptic warnings by the teenage activist Greta Thunberg have prompted a “tsunami” of young people seeking help.