Pirate's Cove

Sadly, the 9 step program doesn’t include how members of the Cult of Climastrology can extricate themselves from the cult and back into the real world. Because their own non-science talking points have made them depressed

Depressed about climate change? There’s a 9-step program for that.

One recent weeknight, ten people gathered around a knotty walnut table in a living room in suburban Salt Lake City. Laura Schmidt, a 31-year-old environmental advocate, spoke first. This being the group’s eighth gathering, their discussion centered on seeking beauty and meaning. Schmidt, an athletic woman with a dry sense of humor and shoulder-length brown hair, talked about the importance of exercising the neocortex, the part of the brain that mediates advanced mental functions, in order to access deeper meaning. With the Earth tilting toward climate catastrophe, the capacity to build resiliency through beauty and meaning is critical for preserving the self and planet, Schmidt said. Each member of the group took a few minutes to share. One read a poem by Rilke; another, words by Terry Tempest Williams, the American writer and conservationist. They spoke about their feelings of anxiety and grief, and of finding strength in the natural world. One man told the story of wheeling his terminally ill wife to a hospital room window to watch a final sunset.

What, no bong available?

Imagine Alcoholics Anonymous mixed with an environmental humanities course, and you’ll begin to get a sense of the “good grief” group started by Schmidt. Its goal is to help people cope with what’s been called “climate grief” — anxiety, sadness, depression, and other emotions provoked by awareness of the planet’s march toward a hotter, less biologically diverse, and potentially unsustainable future. The psychological consequences of climate change have been the subject of greater study in recent years, with the Obama White House releasing a report in 2016 that predicted growing numbers of people would experience direct mental-health effects from exposure to weather-related natural disasters as well as indirect stress and anxiety. In March, the American Psychiatric Association approved a policy committing to mitigate the adverse mental health effects of climate change. (snip)

Schmidt reached out to dozens of social-justice activists and environmentalists, people like Derrick Jensen and Bill McKibben, to learn how they were personally affected. What she found was that feelings of sadness and anxiety, and even literal nightmares, were common.

Last year, with the help of her partner, Aimee Reau, Schmidt developed a nine-step program for building resiliency loosely modeled on AA (The steps begin with “admitting there’s a problem,” and include “acknowledging the ways in which we’re complicit,” “taking breaks and respecting your limits,” and “letting go.”) While she initially intended it for environmental professionals, most of those who signed up are employed in other fields but are personally committed to a greener planet. About a dozen people attend each session and 50 subscribe to its mailings. Schmidt, who now works as an outreach coordinator at the environmental group HEAL Utah, hopes to soon evaluate the pilot, incorporate the program as a nonprofit, and potentially expand it to other cities.

Unsurprisingly, none of the 9 steps include “give up your own use of fossil fuels and make your own life carbon neutral.” There’s a lot of reaching inner feelings, demonstrating, doing “inner work”, and the typical squishiness expected from the wackadoodles in the Cult.