Tom DeWeese
Cancel Culture using the pseudo-ailment 'eco-anxiety' to cure the non-existence of manmade global warming/climate change
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By Tom DeWeese
September 27, 2023

Written by Kathleen Marquardt, an associate of Tom DeWeese

In 1972, at the First Earth Summit in Stockholm, the issue of climate change was raised for the first time on the world stage, “warning governments to be mindful of activities that could lead to climate change and evaluate the likelihood and magnitude of climatic effects.” [1]

And most of the world is aware of the Rio Earth Summit that gave us Agenda 21/Sustainable Development – specifically to use Climate Change to reorganize the world from the top down. Ever since then, the global elite has been working to meld every positive aspect of our lives into enemies of a healthy climate – industrialization, free-market capitalism, property rights, individual freedoms, and even moral absolutes.

Do you think I am exaggerating? Let’s look at just one technique the global elite are pushing the Climate Change agenda – “Climate Psychology.” Yep, the state of the climate is in dire straits, if you believe the Climate Alarmists. It is in such dire straits that the American Psychology Association (APA) now addresses a major problem, Eco-anxiety.

The American Psychology Association (APA) describes eco-anxiety as “the chronic fear of environmental cataclysm that comes from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change and the associated concern for one’s future and that of the next generations.”

The Cambridge University Press published “The Psychology of Climate Anxiety” by Joseph Dodds, Ph.D. He begins by describing climate change as “one of the top threats to global health in the 21st century.” But for psychologists, the anxiety and fear are at their end also. “At the same time, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists are coming to terms with ecological loss, anxiety and guilt in their patients, and also among themselves, as they come to grips with the faltering biosphere.” [2]

Physician, heal thyself. Oh, that’s what they are trying to do through their patients’ angst. A good dose of reading sound science articles on climate change would be a better start.

But let’s continue:

    The American Psychological Association’s “2010 report on climate change1 identified six key areas for psychology, including risk perception, psychological and behavioural causes of climate change, psychosocial impacts of climate change, adaptation and coping strategies, psychosocial barriers to action and the role of psychologists.” [3]]

Behavioral causes of climate change? The weather made me do it? How deep did the global elites have to go to come up with that? NOT! We all learned that in kindergarten, and most of us learned even quicker that it doesn’t fly.

The American Psychological Association “refers to eco-anxiety as ‘a chronic fear of environmental doom’, ranging from mild stress to clinical disorders like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide, and maladaptive coping strategies such as intimate partner violence and substance misuse.… found complex types of climate anxiety and trauma, including intergenerational effects, especially where environmental damage involves loss of a way of life or culture.” [4]

So now we have a non-occurring, faux boogeyman that is going to be the fault of every murder, beating, and every other schizoid action. Close the courts! Criminals are not responsible for their actions – the climate is.

    “Climate anxiety can lead to symptoms such as panic attacks, loss of appetite, irritability, weakness, and sleeplessness, yet given the increasing evidence about the impact of climate change on health, psychological professionals might ask if their patients feel too much anxiety, or whether they themselves feel too little. Climate anxiety is being felt much more powerfully among the young.” [5]

Do you think that might be because climate change is being pushed in every subject at school – from kindergarten to masters and PhDs? And in some Sunday Schools?

“Climate change is a psychological problem but that does not mean that it should be individualised or medicalised.” As G. Lawton writes, "if eco-anxiety is treated as pathology, ‘the forces of denial will have won…what we are witnessing isn’t a tsunami of mental illness, but a long-overdue outbreak of sanity."

Wow! Now climate change has induced eco-anxiety which is seen as the ultimate sanity. I’m at a loss for words.

    “Climate anxiety is heightened in those that are aware of and feel the existential threat of climate change, by the fact that most of us, most of the time, act as if it does not exist. The poverty of collective responses to climate change is in stark contrast to its threat.” [6]

Basically, psychologists and psychiatrists want us to be lunatics running around screaming “The world is coming to an end”. And it may be, but it would be because of the “cures” for the nonexistent man-made climate change.

    “From this perspective, the problem with climate change is that we do not feel enough anxiety as it slips our notice by missing all the characteristics above. The answer is to help us feel the anxiety, to motivate us to act, turning up the volume on the threat and our response. The lack of effective risk perception leads to behaviours that worsen climate change.” [7]

What behaviors might those be? Taking a vacation that involves a long flight? Refusing to live in a 15-minute city/ideal Communist city? Eating rare steak at every chance we get? Wanting to cook on gas and not be forced to drive an electric vehicle?

    “Both climate change and COVID-19 are environmental crises where human behaviour and psychology are important factors, yet the latter happens much faster, with clearer links between behaviour and consequence, leading to much more dramatic responses. International efforts to respond to COVID-19 may have the unintended benefit of shaking people out of climate lethargy, by showing that the global mobilisation required to confront climate change is possible, and allowing the public to see (and feel) that invisible environmental dangers are very real.” [8]

Whoa! COVID is an environmental crisis? Since when?

Ah, right. Many are so dumbed down and programmed that if they are given (fed) two disparate pseudo-facts and told they are closely related, they will put 2+2 together and start masking and social distancing to help fight climate change.

Comparison with COVID-19

    “Responses to both involve social dilemmas. When reviewing how successful different countries were/are in tackling the viral pandemic, it seems that a crucial factor was not the wealth of the nation, but its social cohesion and a collectivist versus individualistic orientation.” [9]

The last four words are the crux. It is all about turning us into the ideal collectivist/communist citizens.

Dodd expounds, “Ecopsychology views disconnection from nature as also central to the current mental health epidemic.” [10]

I would agree. Which group is closer to nature, farmers, ranchers, loggers, miners, and fishermen or academics and the global elite? Enough said.

    “All major defense mechanisms are clearly visible in relation to climate change, focused on the two emotional threats: denying the reality of climate change (it does not exist, it is a conspiracy), or denying our losses, dependency or responsibility (nature might die but we will be fine; it is caused by other humans or natural causes, the Chinese or the sun, not me).”[11]

When did we stop questioning the science? I was taught that questioning was the cornerstone of science. Equally important here are the facts that the original science of manmade global warming was “edited” and rewritten to come up with the fear factors.

But they go on:

    “There are many shades of variation: not only outright denial, but minimising the threat (it will not be that bad, it will happen in the future, or to other species or countries), by finding scapegoats through projection; intellectualisation (taking courses on climate change without allowing emotional responses or behavioural change); idealising charismatic leaders that support denial, repressing and suppressing awareness; reaction formation (denying the reality or the impulse while simultaneously giving expression to its opposite, e.g. those who ‘burn a tire for Earth day’ or participate in ‘coal-rolling’, becoming environmentally destructive to prove to themselves they either do not believe in climate change or do not care, as an attack against perceived group enemies, and a means of evacuating bad internal states); hopelessness (it is too late anyway); apocalypticism (the end of the world is exciting and allows for fantasies of the ‘bad’ being punished for their behaviours, and we can start again and better63 ); or manic defence behaviours, such as seeking distraction through increasing addictive behaviours and consumption,18,19 to avoid thinking about the problem. A certain amount of climate activism is also of a manic reparation type, which can quickly lead to disillusion and burnout if the movement’s goals are not quickly met. These are just a few of the responses/defences that climate change evokes, with many reactions comparable with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

That should put the fear of climate change into your heart – unless you have studied the science, read both sides, and used reason and logic (not political correctness) to come to a reasonable conclusion.

There is so much more in this document, but I want to finish with one very telling statement:

    “Randall has emphasised the importance of experiencing and articulating difficult emotions, such as loss, grief and fear, in a shared context as a way of developing forms of mutual support. In addition to dealing with anxiety in their clinical practice, therapists can help support the development of social containers to express, contain and mobilise climate anxiety into positive social change.4 Ultimately, the results need to be measured in reduced carbon dioxide emissions rather than necessarily reduced expressions of fear.” [12]

Yep, it’s all about reducing harmless carbon dioxide emissions and not about allaying people’s fears.

This is being taught at the California Institute of Integral Studies, [13] and soon should be at a university near you.

This is not education. It is indoctrination, brainwashing!

What are you going to do about this kind of mind control? This is an article from an “academic” journal. This is a perfect example of, not only the so-called academic claptrap being used to poison our children’s minds, but we find the same pseudo-science in way too many medical articles from once-renowned journals. This is the destruction of sound science, moral absolutes, and reason in our citadels of higher learning today.

Please speak up, speak out – even if it is only at your local school board. Our entire way of life, of our beliefs in reason, logic, and sound science, are being erased as we do nothing.

Let the lion roar.

Sources:

[1] https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/stockholm-kyoto-brief-history-climate-change

[2] Rust, M-J. Towards an Ecotherapy. Confer Books, 2020. Dodds, J. (2021). The psychology of climate anxiety. BJPsych Bulletin, 45(4), 222-226. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2021.18, Joseph Dodd, PhD

[3] Rust, M-J. Towards an Ecotherapy. Confer Books, 2020.Google Scholar Dodds, J. Otto fenichel and ecopsychoanalysis in the Anthropocene.

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8499625/#:~:text=Climate%20anxiety%20can%20lead%20to,whether%20they%20themselves%20feel%20too

[5] Kelly A. Eco-anxiety at University: Student Experiences and Academic Perspectives on Cultivating Healthy Emotional Responses to the Climate Crisis. University of Colorado at Boulder, 2017. (https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/2642/)

[6] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8499625/#:~:text=Climate%20anxiety%20can%20lead%20to,whether%20they%20themselves%20feel%20too

[7] Koh H. Communicating the health effects of climate change. JAMA 2016; 315: 239–40.

[8] Dodds J. Elemental Catastrophe: Ecopsychoanalysis and the Viral Uncanny of COVID-19. Stillpoint Magazine, 2020. (https://stillpointmag.org/articles/elemental-catastrophe-ecopsychoanalysis-and-the-viral-uncanny-of-covid-19/).

[9] Cammett M, Lieberman E. Building Solidarity: Challenges, Options, and Implications for COVID-19 Responses. Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, 2020. (https://ethics.harvard.edu/files/center-for-ethics/files/safrawhitepaper4c.pdf).

[10] Dodds, J. (2021). The psychology of climate anxiety. BJPsych Bulletin, 45(4), 222-226. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2021.18

[11] ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8499625/#ref59

[12] Dodds, J. (2021). The psychology of climate anxiety. BJPsych Bulletin, 45(4), 222-226. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2021.18

[13] https://www.ciis.edu/public-programs/climate-psychology-certificate

____________________

Kathleen Marquardt has been an advocate for property rights and freedom for decades. While not intending to be an activist, she has become a leader and an avid supporter of constitutional rights, promoter of civility, sound science, and reason. She is dedicated to exposing the fallacies of the radical environmental and animal rights movements. She has been featured in national publications including Fortune, People, the Washington Post, and Field and Stream, as well as television news programs such as Hard Copy, The McLaughlin Group, Geraldo, and many others. Today, she serves as Vice President of American Policy Center. Kathleen now writes and speaks on Agenda21/2030, and its threat to our culture and our system of representative government.

CONTACT INFORMATION

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contact@americanpolicy.org

© Tom DeWeese

 

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Tom DeWeese

Tom DeWeese is one of the nation's leading advocates of individual liberty, free enterprise, private property rights, personal privacy, back-to-basics education, and American sovereignty and independence... (more)

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