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?

You need to stop spinning.
medication and CBT.
doesn’t mean you can’t campaign for change but sitting and searching for evidence that the world is doomed.

Sorry, @Wolfiefan, I’ve got myself into a doom spiral again. I’ve got previous for it, and lots of it big existential stuff (nuclear war being the other big one alongside climate change). I know I need to stop scrolling but what if they’re right. Trying to hold on to all the sensible things I’ve read on this thread.

Space bubbles and the like sound like trouble - we don't have a good record of interfering with nature sadly, Australia's experiment with cane toads spring's to mind! You're right it's also a very real risk that it would be a free pass.

Some of the posts remind of Jonesey in Dads Army! Panic, don't panic!

If it's any reassurance I recently had a conversation around how we might model and test material degradation and possible pollution over a 500 year period, basically trying to avoid some of the risks inherent in @onlywhenidream 's panic proposals. 😉

@HelpMeICantCope an example that might be outing, I'm not involved in any way but came across it recently: ecomotus

Basically by injecting a small amount of hydrogen into the air filter of an internal combustion engine they reduce CO2 by 30%, NOx by 67% and particulate emissions by 80% - pretty cool eh? These guys deserve to be millionaires.

I'd love to see anyone describe a set of proposal that would actually limit us to "only" 1.5 ( ie worse than we are today ) that you wouldn't claim as "panic"

Anything that relies on magic technology solution being ready by 2040 are sci fi land / distractions typically funded by people who don't want change .

Every year we leave things the steeper the changes we will need

Climate scientists are continually pushed to put out best case pictures so as not to panic people but all it really does is give government wiggle room

We have very few years to make substantial changes if we are to avoid really bad scenarios

And richer countries need to lead the way

Hah, this has aged well. Scorched earth more like…

exactly this! We are the ones behaving rationally here…

Sorry, crashed and lost my quote.

I agree!

Hydrogen only reduces emissions at the exhaust

Currently hydrogen produces loads of emissions in making it

It will take decades to build up significant green hydrogen production

The sad thing is - Scotland is well positioned to do so , re use the old gas and oil sites with wind , making hydrogen when we have more wind than we need

Pump some of that hydrogen into our gas supply to reduce the impact of home heating

It's all fantastic stuff but we need action now and we haven't even got investment needed to make it happen in the next 10 years and we need strong carbon reduction now

The future I see for the new technologies is to rebuild our quality of life , but we either need a short term hit or we will have mass starvation , widespread drought , billions on the move , loss of major cities like New York ...

If you think about it rationally OP we are all doomed from the minute we are born. We are all going to die, our children will die and their kids will and so on. Any number of horrid things could happen to us. In the face of all this we don’t give up, we carry on, we cherish our families, we laugh, we experience love and grab the joy where we can. Real happiness is to be found in the now and understanding that you cannot control everything because if you thought of everything that could go wrong you would live in a complete state of anxiety - which is kind of what you are doing now.
If climate change is your passion then yes get involved and join an action group but be careful you are not attaching yourself to a cause out of obsession and worry.
Work on yourself first and your own perspective and then start to channel your passions into positivity and action.
I honestly think you would benefit from seeing a GP and talking about OCD. Ruminating whether it’s a real concern or not will ruin your life.
And most important of all put your own mental health first and keep off harmful
media that will keep your obsession going.

Hi @HelpMeICantCope the increasing hysteria from @onlywhenidream is just that, and I think on a mental health thread is incredibly disrespectful and insensitive. @onlywhenidream

On the XR stuff, OP, try not to take it too literally. I completely support their activism, but their messages show a "worst case" scenario (and often reflect trends from 10 years ago, which are no longer valid). I understand why they do this (they need maximum impact in a single post/tweet/ad), but it's not the whole, complex picture.

On the having kids thing, I used to feel the same way sometimes. Hans Rosling's TED talks helped me change my perspective. It's not about climate change, but he is pretty convincing in showing that while there are many serious problems in the world, our efforts to improve things really work, and life is getting better.

My dh went through similar about 4 years ago. Looking back it was a kind of breakdown (not saying yours is). He refused any medication; it was a low point in our relationship. Sounds worse than what you’re suffering, I saw a grown man cry, a lot. I wish he’d gone to the gp, and I hope you do too.

Things are generally ok now. He does worry but we talk about it and he actually functions normally most of the time. What helped him initially was talking therapy with someone That actually specialised in “climate breakdown” (yes it’s a thing) and since then has been involved in a small environmental pressure group locally. This has helped enormously. He has a proper “outlet” now for his thoughts and talks with like minded people, but they actually work together to influence stuff (with some degree of success).

it’s a grim situation but not hopeless, IMO.

I think you're right not to have children. Join an activist group and do what you can.

@Phrenologistsfinger lets see the mean temp next year… oh I forgot you’re a cultist trying to terrify people, not a poster trying to inject a bit of perspective.
I’m glad a lot of you have taken yourselves out of the gene pool because of weather 😂

@Mefuckingtoo I follow the science, do you? Actually, I know the answer, you clearly don’t.

I am actually ttc, thinking that the more thoughtful, intelligent, rational people should be reproducing or the world will become a real version of the film Idiocracy. Although we may be too late there…

@Phrenologistsfinger you mean you read the guardian…

Good luck ttc. I have four kids so you better get cracking if you’re trying to replace my brood of idocracy

@Mefuckingtoo Good for you. I’m unlikely to manage it after 10 losses and IVF. Hopefully OP will make up for it.

Thanks DaftAsABroom I will look into that course. I think (speaking as a normal person with no expertise or science/tech/eco background) it’s very hard for anyone like me to judge what is greenwash and what is real sustainability.

Someone will always say that any strategy is totally ineffective, or is corrupt, or it will be too slow or too limited to actually help.

So we end up feeling constantly anxious, hyper vigilant and like we can’t trust anything to work, scared and depressed, while trying to research what we can do and trying to keep up with making constantly shifting changes. That’s not sustainable.

Alternatively we can try to shut our ears to the whole thing and disengage, which still causes cognitive dissonance at some level (because we do all know climate change is real by now) and also collectively is a really unhelpful reaction because having this response means we’re less likely to be assisting with the collective effort/changes required quickly. I’m sure there’s loads of other reactions too.

So I really appreciate the point you make about education but I also wanted to ask whether the funders are investing in psychological research around human responses to climate change and how to appeal to those responses to get everyone to help in mitigating climate change where we can? (Recognising that government and infrastructure changes will make the biggest contribution).

^sorry if thats too off topic- happy to start another thread. Hope you’re feeling a bit better OP.

@BuffScrag yes there's a fair bit of research into the psychology and discussion of climate change and net zero, Discourses of Climate Delay is particularly relevant to some of the posts on this thread.

@BuffScrag I find it hard to decipher green wash from genuine action too. I’m feeling a bit better than I was when I started this thread, hope you’re OK too. Thank you all for your contributions. I’m not sure if it’s a social media echo chamber thing, but I’m seeing/hearing a lot more about fighting for net zero and holding the government to their targets/promises this week. Let’s hope that this is the momentum building and the start of the change we need.

OP, I recognise a lot of what you are saying because I've also had quite severe problems with anxiety. As it happens, I'm not bothered about climate change - I reckon the climate has been doing all kinds of things for millennia and will continue to do so, but it does it so gradually that we will adapt. It also seems to rain more or less constantly where I live!

The problems start when anxiety fixates on something that's actually happening (or something that might happen - the possibility of a nuclear war was my particular trigger for a bad spiral).

It's good that you are going to see your GP, because you need to find a way to get yourself into a position where you accept that climate change is a thing, but don't let it take over your life. So you wouldn't be sweeping it under the carpet or denying it - but you'd be able to rationalise it more effectively.

Should any of us be living life normally when this is happening? Yes, we should. My children are now all adults, but I would definitely be having children if I were 29 now. I'd be taking them to the park and the shops and the beach and doing everything I did with mine when they were little. Don't allow yourself to have no present because you're so worried about the future. One thing that having a toddler would teach you is that the only thing that matters or even exists is the present moment. In a way, having children is the best thing you could do because it would give you something more important to focus on in the here and now.

BTW, If I were to start having children now, I'd be more worried about social media, internet porn etc than I would be about climate change. On that score, stop reading stuff on the internet about climate change. Most people on the internet are loons.

Glad you're doing a bit better OP. Totally agree with you. The Tory Leadership election and incoming general election in 2 years time or less means it is a really good time to write to our MPs to get them call for net zero ASAP. They need to understand that people are really concerned about this and the climate change action (or lack of) will be determining votes next time we get an election.
Thank you for the psychology link DaftasaBroom that is great to hear that money is doing into this.

@BuffScrag NetZero by 2050 already is law, it was pretty much the last thing Tharesa May did as prime minister. What's required now are the policies and regulations to ensure that it happens.