[✔️] April 22, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*April 22, 2021*/


[West no longer wet]

*The Future of Western Water Restrictions Is Here*
The West is dry and getting drier. Federal officials said this week that 
a major source of water for the Southwest could face some of its first 
official water restrictions later this year if water levels keep dropping.

New projections issued by the Bureau of Reclamation predict that the 
water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, two manmade reservoirs along 
the Colorado River, will reach historically low levels in the coming 
months. The water level at Lake Mead is sitting at just 39%, while Lake 
Powell is at 36%. The government predicts that Lake Mead’s water level 
will fall below 1,075 feet (328 meters) by June, the level which 
triggers official government water shortage procedures for the seven 
states that get their water from the Colorado River...
- -
But farms in central Arizona, which are first in line to cut their water 
share under the drought contingency plan, could see serious reductions 
as an important water delivery system in the state would see its water 
supply cut by one-third by next year.

“We’ll have to lay off employees,” Dan Thelander, a farmer in the 
region, told CNN of the possible cuts, saying that he may have to leave 
up to 40% of his land fallow. “We won’t be buying as many seeds or 
fertilizer or tractors, and so we’ll just have to scale down and operate 
a smaller farm. And so, yes, it’ll hurt a lot.”

And it’s not just agriculture that could be affected by low water 
levels. The water in Lake Mead also serves to power the Hoover Dam, 
which generates enough hydropower to serve 1.3 million people each year 
in Nevada, Arizona, and California. Less water in the lake, however, 
could mean less electricity generated by the turbines in the dam. While 
a dam manager told the AP that the government has been making changes to 
the turbines to prepare for them to function with less water, the 
lowering levels in the lake will probably mean that there will be less 
hydropower from the dam in the future.

There’s always a chance that a wetter spring or other favorable weather 
could reverse course and pump water levels back up to prevent 
restrictions from happening this time, but the odds aren’t looking good 
for that. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast 
for the next three months—already the start of the dry season for the 
West—are likely to be even drier than normal. Drought, meanwhile, is 
forecast to linger in the river basin and could even worsen. This latest 
drama on the river is, undoubtedly, a signal for its long-term future.

“All the climate change projections say there will be less water in the 
river,” said Seager. “Dealing with these things now is always sort of 
good planning for what’s going to come. The region is going to have to 
adapt to having less water available.”
https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-future-of-western-water-restrictions-is-here-1846713726 


- -

[Associated Press]
*US West prepares for possible 1st water shortage declaration*
https://apnews.com/article/arizona-colorado-lakes-water-shortages-colorado-river-09302e61c5e0ef051f50459f3dcb771f


[Ooops!]
*Kamala Harris Lays Out Economic Priorities, Skips Climate Change*
Climate remains in the background during talks about the Biden 
administration’s infrastructure plan
By Adam Aton, E&E News on April 20, 2021
In her first major economic address, Vice President Kamala Harris 
yesterday outlined what the White House billed as a “vision of the future.”

Conspicuously absent: talk of climate change, which scientists and 
economists say will define the 21st century.

Harris’ speech fits a pattern of the Biden administration keeping 
climate in the background of its $2 trillion infrastructure plan, even 
as the White House touts its clean energy promises to an international 
audience. President Biden will press other countries in a Washington 
summit this week to increase their climate ambitions. He’s expected to 
direct attention to his infrastructure plan as a sign of U.S. commitment.
- -
School bus electrification was a focus of Harris’ as a senator and 
presidential candidate. And her tour yesterday signaled the 
administration’s commitment to its clean transportation proposal—one of 
the largest components of Biden’s plan ($174 billion) and a specific 
target of Republicans angling for a smaller bipartisan package.

Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) in a joint 
appearance on Fox News Sunday floated the idea of a $800 billion package 
focused on “core” infrastructure (E&E Daily, April 19).

Responding to that idea, White House press secretary Jen Psaki yesterday 
said the administration is listening to all proposals and “ideally” 
would find bipartisan consensus.

“The president’s bottom line here is that the only thing we cannot do is 
fail to invest in our nation’s infrastructure, rebuild our economy and 
create millions of jobs,” she said. “That’s the only piece he does not 
want to see us fail to do as a country.”

She later added that green jobs were “very central to the American Jobs 
Plan,” as well as Biden’s upcoming climate summit.

“When we talk about the climate summit and how we’re thinking about 
setting these targets and how we’re going to achieve them, a big part of 
that is investing in areas of our economy,” she said, “where we can 
create and build out industries and create jobs where we’re also able to 
meet our [climate] targets that we’ll set.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken also spoke yesterday about the role of 
clean energy in U.S. competitiveness (see related story).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/kamala-harris-lays-out-economic-priorities-skips-climate-change/ 




[list of false solutions]
*OPINION: Memo to the Biden administration: What not to do on climate*
by Jacqueline Patterson |  NAACP
Wednesday, 21 April 2021
By Jacqueline Patterson, director of the environmental and climate 
justice program at the National Association for the Advancement of 
Colored People (NAACP).

Recently, I had the opportunity to advise a wealthy individual on their 
personal giving.  I spent a considerable amount of time providing a 
written memo on how to support grassroots-led efforts to address climate 
change.  But when the resulting plan was made public, I read it with 
horror. Evidently, in my extensive guidance on what to do, my 
recommendations lacked clarity on what not to do.

Now, I’ve fielded many requests to weigh in on the Biden-Harris 
administration’s climate plans. In coalition with many other 
organizations, I have helped craft various “100 days” documents, 
spotlighting the critical need to center frontline communities, advance 
intersectional solutions, and implement a just transition.

However, it occurs to me that I should not make the same mistake in 
failing to illuminate the traps to avoid.

There is so very much at stake. Between climate change, COVID-19, the 
economic crisis, and racial injustice, you could say we are in the midst 
of a syndemic—an interconnected series of epidemics with shared, 
systemic roots. Unless those root causes are addressed, crises will 
continue to sprout like the heads of a hydra, with marginalized group 
the most impacted.

Climate “solutions” that ignore these interrelated challenges will not 
be effective or just. Here are some of the all-too-common false 
solutions, omissions, and past patterns we must avoid:

*Carbon pricing—* Carbon-pricing allows polluters to pay a nominal fee, 
or sell and trade the “right” to emit greenhouse gases. Too often, this 
results in polluters increasing emissions in places where it is cheapest 
to pollute, intensifying the lethal poisoning of BIPOC communities.
*Propping up polluters— *Strategies that support harmful natural gas, 
nuclear, biomass, biofuels, and carbon capture and sequestration are 
largely driven by the need to pacify powerful constituencies. Efforts to 
address the climate crisis will fail if they are counterbalanced by 
coddling of polluters.
*Supporting investor-owned utilities-- *It’s not just the energy sources 
that are problematic; we can’t continue to support a failed utility 
business model that lines the pockets of investors and CEOs while 
heartlessly turning off energy access to impoverished people, often with 
fatal results.
*Technofixes—*Too many are looking for easy answers so we can 
geoengineer our way out of the climate crisis. But, as Martin Luther 
King said, “All progress is precarious and the solution to one problem 
brings us face to face with another problem.” Tinkering with complex 
planetary systems—by, for example, using aerosols to control the earth’s 
temperature—is likely to yield unforeseen and even deadly consequences.
*Single-issue solutions—*In the words of Audre Lorde, “There is no such 
thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue 
lives.” Solutions that address multiple problems at once — for example, 
creating well-paid jobs while building efficient, resilient homes — are 
both effective and politically popular.
*Ignoring grinding poverty—*Too many communities’ rights and wellbeing 
have been historically ignored and neglected in the fight against 
climate change, including Freedman’s settlements, unincorporated areas, 
deep rural communities, and some urban communities. Our definition of 
“disadvantaged communities” must include and prioritize them.
*Assuming a rising tide lifts all boats—*From Urban Renewal (known as 
“negro removal”) to Opportunity Zones, many programs for economic 
development have turned out to be ineffective or even harmful—uprooting 
and destroying communities they intended to help. Without intentionality 
and community driven planning processes, climate action plans could have 
similar results.
*Separating domestic and foreign policy--*Failure to link fair 
immigration policy with outsized US responsibility for climate change 
deflects responsibility for a key driver of immigration. And failure to 
link the decline of coal burning in the US with a moratorium on coal 
exports just shifts pollution overseas.
*Accepting the linkage between money and politics—*The fossil fuel 
industry and other corporate interests have a stranglehold on our 
legislatures and, to some extent, our courts. But we need not accept 
that. To advance and uphold true democracy, this administration must get 
money out of politics once and for all.
*Failure to address racism and anti-Indigeneity—*Climate change and 
systemic racism are inherently linked as Black and brown communities 
bear the worst impacts of environmental harm. Continuing to ignore 
treaty rights and avoid meaningful reparations legislation would be a 
failure to address this wrong.
*Deploying “Weapons of Math Destruction”—*Too often, policies are driven 
by algorithms and formulas that reinforce inequality, such as funding 
community amenities from taxes that leave marginalized communities even 
worse off and without critical climate infrastructure. Even the upcoming 
Executive Order on Climate Related Risks, if not anchored by equity 
measures, will deepen disparities.
*Incrementalism/low ambition– *This is no time to make small tweaks to a 
fundamentally flawed system. To change systemically rooted problems, we 
need, bold, ambitious, transformational policymaking.

We must avoid the well-worn traps and failed policies outlined above. 
And, as we define what it means to truly “build back better” we can and 
must do so with principles, policies, and practices that are anchored in 
regeneration, cooperation, and democracy.
https://news.trust.org/item/20210421125634-nrp0t


[some education from the NYTimes]
*The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof*
Definitive answers to the big questions.
By Julia Rosen
Ms. Rosen is a journalist with a Ph.D. in geology. Her research involved 
studying ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica to understand past 
climate changes.
Published April 20, 2021
The science of climate change is more solid and widely agreed upon than 
you might think. But the scope of the topic, as well as rampant 
disinformation, can make it hard to separate fact from fiction. Here, 
we’ve done our best to present you with not only the most accurate 
scientific information, but also an explanation of how we know it.

    How do we know climate change is really happening?
    How much agreement is there among scientists about climate change?
    Do we really only have 150 years of climate data? How is that enough
    to tell us about centuries of change?
    How do we know climate change is caused by humans?
    Since greenhouse gases occur naturally, how do we know they’re
    causing Earth’s temperature to rise?
    Why should we be worried that the planet has warmed 2°F since the 1800s?
    Is climate change a part of the planet’s natural warming and cooling
    cycles?
    How do we know global warming is not because of the sun or volcanoes?
    How can winters and certain places be getting colder if the planet
    is warming?
    Wildfires and bad weather have always happened. How do we know
    there’s a connection to climate change?
    How bad are the effects of climate change going to be?
    What will it cost to do something about climate change, versus doing
    nothing?...

- -
Already, studies suggest that climate change has slashed incomes in the 
poorest countries by as much as 30 percent and reduced global 
agricultural productivity by 21 percent since 1961. Extreme weather 
events have also racked up a large bill. In 2020, in the United States 
alone, climate-related disasters like hurricanes, droughts, and 
wildfires caused nearly $100 billion in damages to businesses, property 
and infrastructure, compared to an average of $18 billion per year in 
the 1980s.

Given the steep price of inaction, many economists say that addressing 
climate change is a better deal. It’s like that old saying: an ounce of 
prevention is worth a pound of cure. In this case, limiting warming will 
greatly reduce future damage and inequality caused by climate change. It 
will also produce so-called co-benefits, like saving one million lives 
every year by reducing air pollution, and millions more from eating 
healthier, climate-friendly diets. Some studies even find that meeting 
the Paris Agreement goals could create jobs and increase global G.D.P. 
And, of course, reining in climate change will spare many species and 
ecosystems upon which humans depend — and which many people believe to 
have their own innate value.

The challenge is that we need to reduce emissions now to avoid damages 
later, which requires big investments over the next few decades. And the 
longer we delay, the more we will pay to meet the Paris goals. One 
recent analysis found that reaching net-zero by 2050 would cost the U.S. 
almost twice as much if we waited until 2030 instead of acting now. But 
even if we miss the Paris target, the economics still make a strong case 
for climate action, because every additional degree of warming will cost 
us more — in dollars, and in lives...
more at - 
https://www.nytimes.com/article/climate-change-global-warming-faq.html



[Social costs mean real consequences]
*The Social Cost of Methane Is Much Higher in the U.S. Than Current 
Government Estimates*
Dharna Noor - 4-20-21
Climate experts and lawmakers often refer to the social cost of carbon, 
which is an approximate cost of the net harm caused per ton of carbon 
dioxide dumped in the atmosphere. A new study, published in Nature on 
Wednesday, looks at the social cost of a different greenhouse gas: 
methane. The findings show that the cost is higher than carbon—and 
wildly different around the world because of rampant economic inequality.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than 
carbon dioxide in the short term. Some 60% of methane released into the 
atmosphere comes from industry, including flaring from oil and gas 
extraction and animal agriculture. Scientists recently revealed that 
there’s more of the toxic stuff in the atmosphere now than at any point 
in recorded history. Understanding the damage it’s doing is more vital 
than ever...
- -
Importantly, the damages caused by each extra ton of methane will differ 
depending on the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted. If the world 
makes an effort to draw down overall climate pollution, each individual 
ton is less harmful. For instance, in a scenario where the world enacts 
serious climate policies that start to rapidly draw down greenhouse gas 
emissions in the next decade, the cost of methane pollution would go 
down by 24% per metric ton.
“If we choose mitigate climate change more aggressively, the social cost 
of methane drops drastically,” said Collins. In case we needed another 
reason to urgently take on the climate crisis.
https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-social-cost-of-methane-is-much-higher-in-the-u-s-t-1846731752



[wonderful lecture video ]
*Robert Frank: Putting Peer Pressure to Work to Save the Planet*
Jan 30, 2020
Ed Mays
Psychologists have long understood that social environments profoundly 
shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, often for the worse. But 
social influence is a two-way street—our environments are themselves 
products of our behavior. Author Robert Frank joins us with insight from 
his book Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work, identifying 
ways to unlock the latent power of social context—perhaps even on a 
level that could save the planet.

Frank draws our attention to the threat of a changing climate, asserting 
that robust measures to curb greenhouse gases could help us curtail 
droughts, flooding, wildfires, and famines. He draws our attention to 
new research that shows how the strongest predictor of our willingness 
to support climate-friendly policies, install solar panels, or buy an 
electric car is the number of people we know who have already done so. 
Frank explains how altering our social context could help us redirect 
trillions of dollars annually in support of carbon-free energy sources, 
all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. Join Frank to 
learn how fostering more supportive social environments could lead 
individuals everywhere to make choices that benefit everyone.

Robert H. Frank is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics at Cornell 
University, where he has taught since 1972 and where he currently holds 
a joint appointment in the department of economics and the Johnson 
Graduate School of Management. He has published on a variety of 
subjects, including price and wage discrimination, public utility 
pricing, the measurement of unemployment spell lengths, and the 
distributional consequences of direct foreign investment.

Thanks to Town Hall Seattle and Third Place Books
Recorded 1/20/20

***************************
Pirate TV is a 58 minute weekly TV show that provides the book talk and 
lecture content for Free Speech TV.  Pirate TV challenges the Media 
Blockade, bringing you independent voices, information and programming 
unavailable on the Corporate Sponsor-Ship. These posts are for YouTube 
and are usually longer than the broadcast versions. You will notice that 
I don't monetize my videos.  I'm irritated by constant interruptions as 
I'm sure are you, and I would like to have a say over sponsorship.  If 
you would like to pitch in to support this work, consider a donation: 
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PayPal: PirateTVSeattle at gmail.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULTTslNPREQ



[time to nationalize the oil industry]
*Oil’s Rebound Shows the Window to Protect the Climate Is Closing*
Brian Kahn
A year ago today, oil prices did something never before seen: They 
dipped into negative territory, meaning suppliers were literally paying 
people to take the oil off their hands.

It was a shocking moment in a year full of them, as the pandemic drove 
down demand for the fossil fuels that the world runs on. A year later, 
oil demand is back, and the world is headed for the second-largest surge 
in year-over-year carbon pollution ever seen. It’s reflective of the 
stark reality that, for all that has changed over the past year, we’re 
still living in a world controlled by fossil fuel interests. But if 
world leaders squandered a prime moment to intervene in reshaping our 
relationship with fossil fuels last year, the chance is still there to 
do the right thing for the climate and workers now.

Oil sat at around $63 per barrel on Wednesday, an almost exactly $100 
difference from where it was at this time last year. Demand is bouncing 
back as vaccination campaigns—at least in many wealthy parts of the 
world—pick up speed and coronavirus travel restrictions and concerns 
begin to relax further. In that light, it’s easy to see last year’s 
nadir for the industry, when bankruptcies, losses, exploration for new 
oil, and demand all tanked, as a missed opportunity to rein in the 
industry. But the next best moment is right now.

The hegemony of oil and gas, not just in the U.S. but globally, is on 
clear display in a new International Energy Agency report out this week 
showing the world is poised for the second-largest increase in carbon 
dioxide emissions ever...
- -
“This is shocking and very disturbing,” Faith Birol, the IEA chief, told 
the Guardian. “On the one hand, governments today are saying climate 
change is their priority. But on the other hand, we are seeing the 
second biggest emissions rise in history. It is really disappointing.”...
- -
“The single best thing that the administration could do to wind down the 
existing fossil fuel infrastructure—and do it in a planned way that 
really minimizes the negative impact both on communities dependent on 
fossil fuel jobs and on the workers dependent on those jobs for their 
livelihoods—is to nationalize the fossil fuel industry and engage in a 
managed phase-out,” Paul said. “The administration needs to put these 
workers at the top of their priority list, and that means investing in 
communities and providing them alternative pathways to middle-class jobs 
and secure livelihoods that don’t include extracting fossil fuels from 
the Earth. The worst thing that we could do right now is to leave fossil 
fuel workers and their communities high and dry.”
What may sound radical has been done before, with Paul noting former 
President George W. Bush essentially nationalized airport security with 
the creation of the Transportation Security Administration in the wake 
of 9/11. In the case of the fossil fuel industry, the government 
wouldn’t be stepping in to supposedly try to do something better—in this 
case, the extraction of fossil fuels. Instead, it would be ending the 
practice of doing something harmful for the planet and doing so in a way 
that supports workers.

We’re at a moment where radical change is needed, and the window to 
pursue those changes is still cracked opened just a smidge. If Biden and 
other world leaders fail to bound through it, this year’s hike in carbon 
emissions could be an ominous preview of what’s to come.
https://earther.gizmodo.com/oil-s-rebound-shows-the-window-to-protect-the-climate-i-1846724880



[Check the ClimatePsychologyAlliance at https://www.climatepsychology.us/ ]
*Climate anxiety and PTSD are on the rise. Therapists don’t always know 
how to cope*
Isobel Whitcomb 4-21-21

Many psychologists say they feel unequipped to handle a growing number 
of patients despairing over the state of the planet. A new contingent of 
mental health professionals aims to fix that

Andrew Bryant, a therapist based in Tacoma, Washington, felt helpless 
the first time climate change came up in his office. It was 2016, and a 
client was agonizing over whether to have a baby. His partner wanted 
one, but the young man couldn’t stop envisioning this hypothetical child 
growing up in an apocalyptic, climate-changed world.

Bryant was used to guiding people through their relationship conflicts, 
anxieties about the future, and life-changing decisions. But this felt 
different—personal. Bryant had long felt concerned about climate change, 
but in a distant, theoretical way. The patient’s despair faced him with 
an entirely new reality: that climate change would directly impact his 
life and the lives of future generations.

“I had never considered the possibility,” Bryant said. In that moment, 
his fear was a dense fog. All he could think about in response to his 
client’s anxiety was his own young children: What world would they 
inherit? Should he feel guilty for bringing them into it?

“I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what to say,” Bryant said. He 
did know that nothing in his years of training and experience had 
equipped him to deal with climate change. Bryant has since spent years 
studying the mental health effects of climate change. Today, he is well 
equipped for these situations. But that first experience marked the 
beginning of a reckoning —one he sees happening in the field at large.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) recognizes climate change as 
a growing threat to mental health, but many mental health professionals 
feel unequipped to handle the growing number of people anxious and 
grieving over the state of the planet.

Therapists in a few subspecialties, such as eco-therapy, train 
specifically to integrate environmental awareness into their work with 
clients. But these therapists make up a small percentage of the field, 
and the vast majority of people don’t have access to climate-informed 
therapy. A 2016 study found that more than half of therapists 
interviewed felt that their training had not adequately prepared them to 
deal with the mental health impacts of the climate crisis. Moreover, the 
same study found that although most respondents recognized the 
importance of climate change in the mental health profession at large, 
nearly half saw climate change as irrelevant to their own work specifically.

The reality is that climate change is impacting everyone in the 
therapist’s office; it’s the background—and increasingly the 
foreground—of life on Earth. But for a therapist who is themself barely 
coming to terms with climate change, offering non-judgmental counsel to 
a patient can be particularly challenging.

“I think a lot of therapists do recognize that these issues have 
clinical relevance,” said Susan Clayton, a psychologist at the 
University of Wooster who researches climate anxiety, “but at this 
point, hardly anybody has received any training specifically in 
addressing this.”

With climate-related anxiety, stress, and post-traumatic stress disorder 
on the rise, a contingent of mental health professionals are developing 
a new standard of mental healthcare for our climate-changed world. Their 
profession faces a steep learning curve.

There’s growing recognition in the field of psychology that people are 
experiencing distress over climate change. More than 40% of Americans 
felt “disgusted” or “helpless” about climate change, according to a 
survey published by researchers at Yale University. A 2020 poll from the 
APA found that more than half of respondents were somewhat or extremely 
anxious about the effects of climate change on their own mental health. 
Though not officially classified in the DSM-5, the tome therapists use 
to classify and treat mental illnesses, there’s a name for this state of 
despair that has emerged from academic texts and media since as recently 
as 2007: eco-anxiety.

It’s only natural to feel anxious in the face of a melting planet and 
the sixth mass extinction, both wrought by human actions. But while 
humanity may be responsible for the carbon pollution warming our planet, 
the reality is that just a few large corporations—and complicit 
politicians—have set us on this path. As individuals, it’s easy to feel 
helpless to stop the destruction of the biosphere.

That was my experience. I grew up in a region of Oregon heavily impacted 
by drought and wildfire. Over the past 10 years, my grief has steadily 
intensified as lack of snow closed the mountain where I learned to ski, 
as smoke blanketed my hometown each summer. Though I was in therapy for 
five years, I didn’t speak about my yearly dread of triple-digit 
temperatures, or my obsession over local snowpack reports. I assumed 
that therapy couldn’t ease my sadness, because I was there to deal with 
internal problems. In contrast, climate change seemed like the ultimate 
external problem. If I had no control over climate change, how could I 
begin to tackle my own despair?

“Eco-anxiety is a natural response to a threat. And this is a very real 
threat.”
Climate anxiety is awkward in this way. In some ways, it’s a rational 
response, said Leslie Davenport, a therapist based in Tacoma, 
Washington, and the author of the book Emotional Resiliency in the Era 
of Climate Change: A Clinician’s Guide. “Eco-anxiety is a natural 
response to a threat. And this is a very real threat,” Davenport said. 
Yet it can also debilitate. In college, I began a campaign to shut down 
fracking in Los Angeles County. Within months, I burned out. Constantly 
contemplating the impact of fracking on our atmosphere and communities 
was making it difficult for me to function at a basic level.

Because of this tension between eco-anxiety’s role as a rational but 
potentially debilitating response, there’s no clear, standard definition 
as to when eco-anxiety is unhealthy, if it ever is. “That’s one of the 
questions we really need to be asking,” Clayton said. “Anxiety is not 
pleasant to experience, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s an 
emotional signal that we need to be paying attention.”

But a lack of clear guidelines around eco-anxiety and climate change 
means that many therapists pathologize their clients’ anxiety, or treat 
it as an unhealthy response. Others simply feel uncertain about how to 
treat it. In response to a 2016 survey, nearly one in five therapists 
described their clients’ responses as inappropriate. Several 
participants said that their clients’ beliefs about climate change were 
“delusional” or “exaggerated.” Another quarter gave mixed responses.

One mental health professional told me about an experience with her own 
therapist, when she divulged her anguish over the increasing severity of 
drought. In response, her therapist asked “OK, but what is this really 
about?” The otherwise highly competent, trusted therapist couldn’t 
comprehend that climate change was the sole cause of her distress.

While eco-anxiety is a natural response, it can also become unhealthy 
when it becomes paralyzing, Clayton said. But that doesn’t make it 
exaggerated or misplaced. When a therapist dismisses a client’s distress 
as so, it can be profoundly damaging, Davenport said. “The client 
becomes the problem and the source of dysfunction,” Davenport said of 
this scenario. “Anytime a person is wrongfully blamed it can be painful, 
but coming from a mental health professional, an expert where a power 
differential is also in play, it can be disorienting for the client, 
causing them to question their own reality.” This dynamic harms the 
foundation of trust between client and therapist, and can drive the 
anxious client into further isolation, Davenport said.

Caroline Hickman, a psychotherapist and climate psychologist at the 
University of Bath, has spent years leading training sessions and 
presenting lectures on climate change. But lately, the field’s 
inadequacy in the face of a mounting problem has struck her as 
particularly stark. Increasingly, people have reached out to her after 
confusing or disappointing experiences trying to articulate their 
climate anxiety to trusted therapists. “Suddenly there’s this 
disconnect. And suddenly you realize you’re living in different worlds,” 
Hickman said.

When a therapist dismisses a client’s eco-anxiety or grief, the response 
doesn’t necessarily come from a lack of empathy or concern for the 
climate crisis, Hickman said. Oftentimes, the reaction occurs because 
therapists themselves feel unable to cope with their own feelings about 
environmental destruction—much less those of the client. “Therapists are 
only human—but have a duty and responsibility, I believe, to face this 
stuff and reflect on their own vulnerability in order to help their 
clients,” Hickman added.

For John Burton, a psychoanalyst based in New York City, there’s rarely 
a day when he doesn’t think about climate change. When a client brings 
up the topic—even in a passing comment about air travel or Greta 
Thunberg—he immediately feels a jolt of anxiety.

“It stirs up such feelings of helplessness,” he said. “That’s what comes 
up for me. It shouldn’t.”

When a therapist hasn’t begun to come to terms with their own emotions 
around climate change, it can add to the emotional turmoil of clients 
coping with overwhelming grief and anxiety, said Tree Staunton, a 
climate psychotherapist in Bath, England. For example, a therapist’s own 
grief, anxiety or guilt might come off as defensiveness or withdrawal.

“In therapy, we need to stay with that person’s reality and that 
person’s response. And the worst thing we can do as a therapist is bring 
in our own defenses,” Staunton said. “We don’t want to really experience 
the distress or the anxiety, so we can’t hear the other person’s.”

Climate change is the reality we all live in now. Between 2009 and 2020, 
the proportion of Americans who said they had personally experienced the 
effects of global warming increased from 32% to 42%, according to the 
aforementioned 2020 survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change 
Communication. And in some cases, these effects are directly impacting 
mental health. Researchers followed more than 1,700 children who lived 
through four major hurricanes: Ike, Charley, Katrina, and Andrew. Their 
results, published earlier this year, found that up to half of the 
children went on to experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress 
disorder. For 10% of the children, these symptoms became chronic. In 
another study published in 2018, researchers gathered data on the mental 
health of nearly 2 million people between 2002 and 2012 and local 
climates during that time period. Their results show that over five 
years, 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) of warming was linked 
to a 2% increase in all reported mental health issues.

While the world has a choice when it comes to limiting climate change, 
magically stopping all carbon pollution tomorrow would still leave 
decades of warming baked into the system. That means, presumably, the 
mental health impacts could worsen into the future. Society will have to 
adapt to many changes, including how we treat the attendant grief and 
anxiety of life on a less stable planet.

Therapists differ in how they help clients cope with the mental effects 
of climate change when they become unmanageable. Mindfulness-based 
approaches can help people cope with the intense emotions associated 
with climate anxiety and grief. For example, Davenport might walk 
clients through a guided meditation, in which they imagine themselves in 
a peaceful setting or have them tune into the specific sensations their 
body experiences as they think about climate change. Cognitive 
behavioral therapy, which focuses on addressing unhealthy ways of 
thinking, can help clients paralyzed by distressing thoughts about 
climate change. Climate-informed therapists also encourage activism and 
time in nature as a way to cope with the helplessness often associated 
with eco-anxiety and grief.

“The reason we’re in this mess with the climate emergency is because we 
look at it as separate to ourselves.”
These tools aren’t just for clients; they’re for therapists as well, who 
need to bear witness to the distress people are already experiencing 
over climate change. “Therapists need to be able to sit with that 
feeling, whatever that feeling is with their client,” Staunton said.

Davenport, Staunton, and Hickman all lead training sessions where other 
therapists can learn to develop a climate-aware practice. At a recent 
training, Hickman spent the first 40 minutes of a training session 
helping students “recreate their connection” with the environment. Each 
went around and talked about their personal relationship to the planet, 
before learning about the relationship between climate change, grief, 
and loss.

The goal of these sessions isn’t to become a specialist in climate 
change. The goal isn’t even to develop a discrete set of skills to use 
when a client expresses their anxiety about the environment, Hickman 
said. The goal is to help therapists view their entire practice through 
a new lens.

“We look at every aspect of a person’s life through that therapeutic 
climate lens,” Hickman said. “People are existing and dealing with 
personal problems in the context of this global crisis now. And the 
global crisis will impact on the way you deal with personal problems.”

For Hickman, that means looking at the environments clients inhabit, at 
the planet as other relationships in clients’ lives, just as therapists 
would examine clients’ relationships to their parents or significant others.

“The reason we’re in this mess with the climate emergency is because we 
look at it as separate to ourselves,” Hickman said. She helps clients 
explore anxiety and grief about climate change by exploring their 
relationship to their local environment. For Hickman, her relationship 
to the planet is embodied by two trees in her childhood backyard, an oak 
and an ash, which she used to sit under when things were difficult in 
her home.

By bringing this lens to the mental health profession, climate-informed 
therapists hope that it’ll encourage more people to speak out about 
their emotions around climate change. Although 27% of people say that 
they’re “very worried” about global warming, according to Yale’s 2020 
survey, therapists say that emotionally significant conversations about 
climate change rarely come up in therapy, but that the topic does come 
up in passing comments—a finding supported by the 2016 survey on climate 
change and therapy. This might simply be because people aren’t paying 
attention to their emotions about climate change, or don’t think to 
bring the topic up, Burton said.

“We feel like it’s something we can’t do anything about,” he said.

Climate anxiety and grief are what Davenport called “disenfranchised” 
emotions. As a society, we don’t yet make space for it as a valid 
emotional response; not in the same ways that we would for, say, grief 
over the death of a family member. “It’s prevalent, but no one’s allowed 
to speak up,” she said.

Under a climate-informed model of therapy, therapists encourage these 
people, who otherwise might remain silent, to bring their grief and 
anxiety into the open. They might help clients tease out passing 
comments about climate change, or even include climate change-related 
questions on intake forms.

It sometimes takes a crisis to provoke change. In the wake of the 9/11 
attacks, the Council for Accreditation for Counseling and Related 
Standards, which accredits master’s and doctoral degree programs in 
counseling and its specialties, began requiring programs to include 
crisis, disaster, and trauma response as core counseling curricula.

“Before 9/11, no one ever thought about the role of therapy for 
disasters, ever,” Burton said. He hopes that climate change will force a 
similar change sooner, rather than later.

For Bryant, that first experience working with an eco-anxious client was 
a reckoning. Since then, Bryant has devoted years to learning about the 
psychology of climate change. He facilitates study groups on Zoom, posts 
detailed guidelines for leading a climate-change support group, and 
gathers articles on climate science and psychology. Today, others 
consider him a leader in the field of climate-change informed 
psychotherapy. He’s seen these changes mirrored in the field at large.

“I’ve seen a huge shift in discourse,” Bryant said.

In England, Staunton has been advocating for more systemic changes. 
Recently, her advocacy led to the addition of new training standards in 
the UK’s Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy College, one of 10 
subsections of the UK Council for Psychotherapy. New therapists will be 
required to learn about the environmental and climate crises and the 
unconscious defenses we’re all employing when we think about this 
crisis. They’ll have to learn when to support those defenses in 
clients—and how to help clients overcome them.

In the coming years, the number of people on the frontlines of climate 
change is going to grow. Widespread training promises more widespread 
access to necessary mental healthcare, Staunton said.
https://earther.gizmodo.com/therapists-are-reckoning-with-eco-anxiety-1846686112
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/20/climate-emergency-anxiety-threapists



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - April 22, 1970 *

April 22, 1970: "NBC Nightly News" anchor Frank Blair, covering the 
events of the first Earth Day, cites global warming as a concern.
[but NBC decided to drop that video archive]

So let's try Wikipedia 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day#Earth_Day_1970


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