The latest impact of climate change: eco-anxiety.
Symptoms: Generalized discomfort and stress related to the future of the world and possibly your personal role in said future.
Ways to fight it:
- Blame “the media.”
- Blame the IPCC.
- Spend lots of money on an “eco-therapist.”
- Carry around minerals.
- Buy greener stuff to make yourself feel better.
From the Columbia News Service:
[A] growing number of people have literally worried themselves sick over a range of doomsday scenarios.
Their worry has a name: eco-anxiety.
And the latest report on climate change — a United Nations panel warned Friday of increased hunger, water shortages, massive floods, avalanches, and species extinctions in various parts of the world unless nations take major action — is not likely to help.
Melissa Pickett, an eco-therapist with a practice in Santa Fe, says she sees between 40 to 80 eco-anxious patients a month.
They complain of panic attacks, loss of appetite, irritability and unexplained bouts of weakness, sleeplessness and “buzzing,” described as an eerie feeling that their cells are twitching. Pickett’s remedies include telling patients to carry natural objects, like certain minerals, for a period of weeks. Making environmentally friendly lifestyle changes can also prove therapeutic, she says.
The fears of the eco-anxious are fueled by abundant media coverage of crises like global warming, collapsed fisheries and food shortages. A slew of eco-disaster movies are on Hollywood’s drawing boards.
Insert ginormous eye roll.
