Catastrophist campaigns are depressing many people,
particularly affecting children
I’m not surprised that some climate scientists claim that
they suffer from a new mental health condition called ‘ecological grief’. These
days you draw attention to your cause is by highlighting the emotional pain you
suffer.
A label in search of victims
The Guardian reports that researchers are forming
ecological-grief support groups online to “share their feelings.”
Scientists reporting their sense of environmental loss,
self-consciously come across as mental health patients in search of coping
strategies.
Professor Steve Simpson, a marine biologist at the
University of Exeter, argues that it is essential to find ways of sharing
ecological grief and “work together to support each other.” Another
researcher, Ashlee Consolo, explains that ecological grief is “certainly
painful” and “it can be terribly isolating” for “it can be
a really horrible experience.”
Supporters of the problem of ecological grief define it
as “the grief felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological
losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems, and meaningful landscapes
due to acute or chronic environmental change”.
A close inspection of this definition and the arguments supporting
it suggest that this is a concept in search of potential victims. It is an
aspirational concept that invites people to feel an emotion that they either
lack or have not yet acknowledged.
Its proponents complain that “ecological grief,
and the associated work of mourning, experienced in response to ecological
losses are often left unconsidered, or entirely absent, in climate change
narratives, policy and research”.
The authors of the statement do not consider the possibility
that the reason why ecological grief is “entirely absent, in climate
change narratives” is because it has little relevance for normal human
beings.
Possibly, the purpose of raising awareness of this sadness
that people don’t realize they even feel is to make them feel guilty and bad
about failing to participate in a ritual of mourning.
Medicalizing normal human concerns
There is a more precise way of explaining the meaning and
use of the term ‘ecological grief’. In a different world, the reaction
described by Simpson and Consolo would have been characterized as a form of
existential distress that human beings experience in response to upsetting
events.
In the 21st century, such difficulties are increasingly
recast in a psychological vocabulary to the point that virtually every problem
is accompanied with a mental health diagnosis.
People who are shy are described as suffering from social
phobia. Kids who argue with their parents and teachers find themselves labelled
victims of ‘oppositional defiant disorder’. Students at university who are
worried about their impending exams are frequently labelled as suffering from
exam anxiety or exam stress.
Environmental activists have been at the forefront of
medicalizing the issues that they promote.
From their perspective, the problem is not simply the
degradation of the environment, but its impact on the mental health of
concerned individuals.
Ecological grief is not the only mental health condition
invented by environmental activists. Arguably, ‘eco-anxiety’ is the
most fashionable mental health condition promoted by environmental campaigners.
One reason why eco-anxiety has gained such traction in the green milieu is
because it is said to afflict children. And children always attract the
attention of the public.
There is growing discussion about a supposed eco-anxiety
epidemic.
Reports of an epidemic of eco-anxiety are not backed up by
any serious statistical evidence. “No stats are available on the
prevalence of eco-anxiety, but some experts have noted an increase in public
anxiety around climate change,” notes an article on the
subject. Susan Clayton, who co-authored a report titled ‘Mental Health and
Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance’, speculates: “We
can say that a significant proportion of people are experiencing stress and
worry about the potential impacts of climate change, and that the level of
worry is almost certainly increasing.”
That’s another way of saying that we are making things up as
we go along.
The project of medicalizing people’s reactions to
environmental problems plays a significant role in the playbook of
environmental crusaders. Through the diseasing of people’s reactions to
environmental problems, activists seek to humanize and personalize their
catastrophic view of the world. Reports of scientists suffering from ecological
grief invite people to react to environmental problems in a manner that is
analogous to the sense of mourning they experience in response to the loss of a
family member.
Damaging children with your panic
The invitation to feel a sense of ecological grief has the
perverse effect of making people feel more vulnerable and insecure. Its
corrosive influence is particularly damaging to the lives of young people.
The normalization of grief and the cultivation of emotional
anxiety disorients the young and renders them passive in the face of the
challenges they face. No doubt, the scientists involved in ecological grief
support groups genuinely believe that they are suffering from a new mental
health condition.
But unwittingly, they are inciting the young to feel
insecure and anxious. Unfortunately, instead of acting as problem solvers,
scientists obsessing about their ecological grief become part of the problem.
In the current climate, an aspirational idea like ecological
grief can easily be integrated into the reality of Western culture.
Eco-alarmism has become a constant feature of the media. Eco-doom
and eco-anxiety are regularly communicated through programs that encourage the
audience to embrace a perspective of imminent catastrophe.
This theme was most powerfully captured by the HBO
series ‘Big Little Lies’. In one episode, it featured a scene where the
daughter of one of the main protagonists has a panic attack in school after
being constantly subjected to a series of climate scare stories by her teacher.
The teacher has no doubt that through stimulating the
concern of eight year-old school children, he is performing an important public
duty. When it is OK for teachers to scare children, it is not surprising that
we are all encouraged to publicly declare our grief for the environment.
Frank Furedi
Dr. Frank Furedi, author and social commentator is an
emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury.
13 January 2020
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/478154-ecological-grief-climate-scientists/
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