Pirate's Cove

Now, seriously, did anyone expect this outcome?

For young Californians, climate change is a mental health crisis too

Maddie Cole in eighth grade stopped running cross country. She’d competed the year before, but the air quality in her native Sacramento was so bad that she got sick during a race; she soon learned she had asthma.

The next year the sky above Sacramento turned gray with smoke from the 2018 Camp fire. Maddie and her classmates went to school with masks on. “It felt,” she said, “like a futuristic apocalypse.”

The situation has only worsened as wildfires and their devastation have become so routine that she and her classmates are “just used to it,” said Maddie, now 16 and a junior. This fall “it was just like, ‘Yeah, California’s on fire again. It’s that time of year.’”

Well, yeah. California is renowned for having wildfires. It’s nothing new. And, her asthma and poor air quality are not from CO2. Buy, in Climate Cult World

Neither the polluted air nor the wildfires punctuating Maddie’s adolescence are random. Both are being exacerbated by climate change, and the future they portend has left Maddie feeling helpless, anxious and scared. Climate anxiety and other mental health struggles are rampant among Maddie’s generation, according to experts who warn that young Californians are growing up in the shadow of looming catastrophe — and dealing with the emotional and psychological fallout that comes with it. (snip)

Such dire predictions can affect mental health, particularly among young people. Polls have found that climate change-related stress affects daily life for 47% of America’s young adults; over half of teenagers feel afraid and angry about climate change; and 72% of young adults are concerned that it will harm their community.

Climate depression played a central role in teenage activist Greta Thunberg’s political awakening, and according to Varshini Prakash — executive director of youth-focused climate activism group the Sunrise Movement — it’s not uncommon for her group to meet kids who have contemplated suicide over the climate crisis.

You know, if you keep telling kids that they are Doomed, teaching them that they are Doomed, them seeing news and such that they are Doomed, that the Earth is doomed, that all life on the Earth is Doomed, what, exactly, do you think is going to happen with their mental health? Especially since it has been shown that it’s a whole lot easier to be negative than positive. It’s a self fulfilling circle of Doom.

The Earth’s temperature has skyrocketed since the Industrial Age, fueled by human activity and accompanying greenhouse gas emissions. Dramatic reductions in those emissions, and in fossil fuel use, will be necessary to prevent temperatures from reaching a tipping point by 2030, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned two years ago.

A rise of 1.5 Fahrenheit in 170 years during a Holocene warm period is normal.

Young Angelenos described similar emotions and mental stress when contemplating the climate crisis. Kate Shapiro, 15, said humanity’s selfishness, greed and “lack of foresight” about the warming planet contributes to her depression. Sarah Allen, 25, said she shudders in “real terror” when contemplating the plight of future generations. And Sam Jackson, 29, said the enormity of the problem leaves him feeling “exhausted.”

I’ll bet these young climate cultists aren’t willing to give up their smartphones and gadgets, streaming their shows, movies, and videos, fossil fueled trips where they need to go (because walking and biking would mess up their outfits and hair for the selfies and stuff), and all the other things, eh?