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Rantings of new age prophets like Al Gore and David Suzuki

Eco-anxiety – a condition whose time has come

A recent Harris/Decima poll asked Canadians how they felt about the environment. The poll relied on respondents completing online questionnaires that may have resulted in responses different than if it was conducted by the usual telephone polling. The pollster received responses from 10,000 Canadians. Over three quarters (76 per cent) of those who filled in the questionnaire believe that the environment is not simply a fad and will be a dominant issue for years to come.

When asked who was responsible to protect the environment, individuals or corporations, 82 per cent of respondents answered that both were responsible. As pointed out by Martin Mittelstat in his Globe and Mail column, this is a big change from twenty years ago where most of the blame for environmental degradation was put on those evil, capitalistic corporations. Now, we are all responsible for killing the planet.

          It should come as no surprise then that a new psychological condition has emerged in recent years – eco-anxiety. Melissa Pickett, a licensed therapist in Santa Fe New Mexico and an “expert” in eco-anxiety, described people who are afflicted with this condition as follows:

          They feel restless, they feel shaky, they can’t sleep, they may have uncontrollable bouts of crying …they may have a sense of doom, but they don’t know why.

          It is a sure bet that people with real problems, say the homeless, are not prime candidates for eco-anxiety. It is hard to picture a homeless drug addict, lying on his heating grate and worrying about all the incandescent light bulbs in the building above him. No doubt the sufferers are relatively well off people, probably who have come of age in the “me generation” and who actually believe that they themselves are destroying the Earth and everything we know. It gives meaning to their Seinfeldian existences.

          But the ranting of new age prophets like Al Gore and David Suzuki make you wonder what is happening to the children. Will they be able to grow up and lead productive lives or will they end up in the offices of Melissa Pickett and her colleagues, crying and shaking about their inability to make meaningful changes to the environment?  For those who came of age during the height of the cold war, those were scary times. Schoolchildren were sometimes forced to go under their desks in nuclear attack drills (as if the desk was really going to protect anyone from an H bomb). But back in those much saner times, children were never told or even thought that they were responsible for the fact that the Ruskies were going to nuke us. Now pressure is being put on kids to do things to protect the environment and save the planet from certain destruction. It then follows that if they do not do what they are supposed to do; something children are notorious for, they are responsible for what the gurus say are the inevitable consequences – total destruction; the end of life as we know it.

          It’s easy to have a chuckle about those people who need to seek professional help because they cannot cope with life after having seen An Inconvenient Truth. Being unable to cope with many of life’s problems is understandable; but becoming anxious about being personally responsible for the death of the planet is absurd. It is the height of arrogance.  It is nothing more than a worry for those who are fortunate to have not much else to worry about.  And we are creating new generations of environmentally obsessed people who will be unable to work, sleep or eat for thinking about all those poor polar bears.

          If the Harris/Decima poll is accurate, eco-anxiety therapy will be a lucrative profession for years to come.