Climate change - I think I want to die

[HelpMeICantCope]

I don’t know what to do or how to cope. All I can think about is climate change and how nobody is doing anything to stop it. This has happened every summer for the last couple of years, the fear of what is coming and the grief for the damage we are doing is unescapable. I’m supposed to be on holiday with DP (well, I am on holiday) and it’s taking all my mental strength not to fall apart. I’m shaking, I can’t eat, I can barely sleep. He’s fine and thinks we’ll solve it and life will go on. I can only see the apocalypse. In another life I’d want to have children, but how can I bring them into this? I just want a simple life, why is this happening to us?

I'm really sorry you are struggling so much, but if these thoughts and feelings are affecting you so badly that you are shaking I think you do need to go to the GP. This is overwhelming anxiety. There is only so much we can do as individuals and actually only so much we can do as a nation, but it's like you feel the responsibility somehow lies with you alone. We are all responsible for this, the weight is shared, other people do care.

Perhaps when you have got these thoughts under control you can actually do something whether political lobbying or raising money for a charity which is actually trying to effect change. Right now you are suffering to the point that you probably can do little. Try your best to take your mind off things and go and start your process of change when you get home. Give yourself a break - panic won't help you or the climate emergency, tell yourself you will begin to help yourself, and then the planet as soon as you can. Which is not now. Change cannot happen overnight - it is a process.

i feel the same OP! I had a little girl last year - I have zero regrets as she is everything to me! But I do have a pang of worry all the time about what sort of future she will have

I had her though because i wanted a child - so it is a purely selfish reason! But hey if our days are numbered i thought well I should do everything I want to do while I still can! and give her the best life i possibly can

I've been as eco as I can with her - got all her things second hand, use cloth nappies, reusable wipes etc - I just try my very best

OP, you are catastrophising due to a clinical anxiety state. The world has always faced existential threats, but people still have children and life goes on.
I was young during the Cuban missile crisis, when we were on the brink of nuclear annihilation between Soviet Russia and the USA. People then feared bringing children into such a world.
You need help with your mental health. I would advise you to see your GP, and also to take a step back from marinading yourself in alarmist news reporting. You can do your bit to help the climate, and accept that others are too, from individuals to companies to governments. Wailing about potential armageddon helps no-one, least of all you!

I did an environmental biology degree and it all felt inevitable when I graduated but I still had kids. As a scientist the earth will die at some point and everything will be lost. However life is very short so I’m going to live my life to the full an enjoy it every day.

even without climate change, if you clicked your fingers and it was fixed tomorrow your child would still never the have the childhood experience you did. Things change. Social media, knife crime etc. your fear would just move to something else.

I remember 9/11 and saying I’d never bring a child into this world. In my mid 40’s now and I’m glad I did, because like everything with the pass he of time, nothing lasts forever. Especially your fertility.

ill. be honest, I have the same thoughts and worries as the OP. I think they are very valid concerns regarding climate change (even the UN agrees there too).

So yes medication/counselling might help to avoid the more extreme feelings the OP has. It might help her feel more in control. But tbh I think we would all be better if we were as worried as the OP is. And some proper measures were taken.

Scientists have been telling us this for decades, it’s true, but this is not about science, this is about greed. We have been sold a lie, that wealth is a synonym for success. It’s not. Balance is the recipe for contentment. Your mind needs balance too, to focus on isotopes as well as negatives.
Have you ever tried meditation?

Positives not isotopes haha

You need to speak to your GP about your extreme anxiety. Of course we need to think about the effect our actions have on the planet. But you shouldn’t be obsessing in this way. That’s unhealthy.

I feel the same OP. I wake up full of dread every day. I know this is not helpful though but I feel paralysed.

I'm so sorry you're struggling with this OP. I wonder if the book 'overcoming unwanted intrusive thoughts' would be helpful to you. I also fixate on things and the strategies in this book have been really helpful. It's obviously a valid thing to worry about but it's important to find a way to manage your feelings so that it doesn't consume you. Big hugs X

It scares me as well. It’s predicted to hit 42 tomorrow. That is an insane temperature. We’ve never got anywhere near temperatures like that before.

The worst thing about climate change is that we can do so little. This is a small, relatively unimportant island. Even if we disappeared tomorrow climate change would still happen. India, China, the USA and Russia are the places that need to get their act together. And when it comes to overpopulation, not having children will make no difference. Europe already has a very low birth rate. It’s Africa that needs to reduce fertility. Africa has the highest birth rate in world - so high that its population is going to double by 2050. In other words, what you and I choose to do is irrelevant.

In the last few years I have begun to genuinely dread the future. Every time I watch the news there seems to be a new record smashed somewhere in the world. And now we are looking at 42 degrees!! If that is happening today, what will things be like in ten or twenty or thirty years? Will we be hitting 50 degrees?

The OP appears to be suffering from a serious condition, so no, we would not be better to all be like this.

Counselling, CBT or hypnosis will allow you to reframe your fear (which achieves nothing) into a more balanced view. Most humans are fucking up the world but they're are people who are working flat out to find a solution, both from a scientific and an activist route.

Where is it predicted to be that high in the UK?

Don’t worry about it it will be fine. Just a new chapter of adventures.

First off you need a trip to the gp, shaking, not eating, not sleeping are all signs that something is wrong. It isn't a normal reaction at all and there is help available for you.

Secondly, you say that you just want a simple life? Then live a simple life. I've learnt that it is better to focus on the things that you can control rather than freak out about the things that you can't. We grow as much fruit and veg as we can. We have slow weekends tending to the garden and chilling out with our pets. We walk or cycle where we can. We only buy second hand and when necessary. We make sure to have lots of wild flowers for the bees. We obviously still have to work but where we can we have simplified our life and live as kind to the planet as we can. We know we are doing our part and being with nature is soothing and healing. We live in a semi detached house by the way, not some big farm in the country but we've worked really hard to make it our sanctuary from the world and really what else can we do? If I spent my time crying and shaking climate change would still be happening.

Climate change is serious, but positive changes are happening. There is an energy revolution already well underway, and I am continually astounded that no one seems to have noticed.

Public opinion has also changed radically in the past 5 years. We may actually get political action soon.

Of course people, industry, government are doing things about it. But it takes time, and it needs the end user to do their bit (that means you).
Since the 70s the world has been worried about fossil fuel and looking for solutions.

That's incorrect. We are still on track to a 2 degree hotter world, which is very different to being on track to a 4 to 8 degree hotter world (which was true a decade or so ago). A 2 degree hotter world is bad, but not apocalyptic.

Worried but not worried enough

We will all suffer because of the glacial pace of change

they've done a number on you haven't they? The fear mongers. If there's nothing anyone can do about it what will worrying do? Nothing.

So why waste your life? I got terrified about "global warming" as a young child when dad told me a hole would be burned through the ozone layer to cook us all. It was around the time Terminator 2 came out so coupled with this I lay awake at night terrified.

This is what the media have done to you.

@onlywhenidream

OP effectively says: "I want to die because no one's doing anything about climate change". Wants to DIE, mind you.

Your response: It's so annoying isn't it?

Annoying. Maybe not the first adjective I'd have reached for.

You are catastrophising OP. I think you need to speak to a doctor and get medication for yout anxiety disorder. I am worried about climate change too. I get anxious about the future. But I try to carry on and do my bit to reduce my own footprint. If for you that means having no children then that is admirable. But you sound to desperately want a baby so I would have one. And then continue to do your bit. Writing to your MP is a good thing. There are things being done by governments/industry. It does take time.

The hole in the ozone layer is a real thing, and very different to climate change. People in Tasmania still very much feel the effects in summer.

The hole in the ozone layer isn't in the news any more for the most amazing reason - because it's healing. And it is healing because worldwide action was taken to ban the chemicals that were causing it.

We fixed the hole. We can fix climate change.