[✔️] September 8, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*September 8, 2021*/

[find a Ghostbuster]
*Anxious about the climate future? Seen a climate-aware therapist lately? *
Along with the growing scope of climate change challenges and the 
growing numbers of climate-concerned people comes an expanding body of 
therapists ready to lend a hand.
by ARIELLA COOK-SHONKOFF and ROBERT BERLEY - - SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

Increasing numbers of adults and children around the world are 
experiencing climate-related distress. With more frequent and intense 
hurricanes, tsunamis, wildfires, and heat waves, and associated deaths, 
traumas, and forced migration, it comes as no surprise that anxiety, 
fears and nagging uncertainties about the future are on the rise.

According to extensive social science analyses done between 2015 and 
2020, the “alarmed” segment of the American adult population more than 
doubled from 11% to 26% – with nearly six in ten “alarmed” or 
“concerned.”*  Climate distress is experienced across racial groups, 
with Latinx and Blacks even more likely to be “alarmed” or “concerned” 
than whites.

*Suppressed climate distress ‘can feel like emotional constipation’*
The emotions arising – worry, helplessness, anger, grief, despair – can 
feel overwhelming, disabling, pernicious. Whether consciously or not, 
many people aim to avoid or dismiss or squelch them. But these responses 
offer only temporary relief from a problem that won’t go away on its own.

Suppressed climate distress can feel like emotional constipation; it’s 
excruciatingly uncomfortable to remain arrested in a state of fear, 
worry, sadness, despair, anger, or agitation inside of our bodies. Yet 
it can be painful as well to bring these emotions to light, and 
difficult to put the experience into words. So how to begin?

The good news is that there are numerous support groups and creative 
ways to process climate anxiety, climate grief, and other related 
emotions. Community advocacy groups such as Citizens’ Climate Lobby, 
facilitated forums like climate cafes or Good Grief Network, religious 
or spiritual institutions, and interactive projects like Dear Tomorrow 
offer community, connection and opportunities to vocalize and express 
feelings and concerns.

*Mood and behavioral changes may signal a need for help*
But for people struggling to function in their daily lives – such as 
getting out of bed in the morning or focusing at work or school  – 
seeking professional mental health support is especially important. 
Another sign that someone might need help is if their mood or behavior 
significantly changes: intense mood swings, agitation, restlessness, 
social avoidance, risky behaviors, increased drug/alcohol use. In some 
cases, people will initiate therapy on their own, but in others, they 
might not think they need help or may hesitate for other reasons. For 
those concerned about someone, approaching them in a non-judgmental way, 
and directing them to resources may be especially helpful.

Lise Van Susteren, MD, co-founder of Climate Psychiatry Alliance and 
author of Emotional Inflammation, acknowledges that initiating therapy 
comes with common fears and anxieties including “fear of exposure and 
fear of not finding a solution.” But on the flip side, she says, not 
talking about issues of great personal concern can feel “crushing to the 
spirit when confronted with the realities of climate change,” leaving 
one feeling alienated and alone.

Sharing private feelings with another person requires a degree of trust, 
safety, and commitment. Some people are accustomed to how therapy works, 
but others might feel ashamed to seek help or uncomfortable opening up 
to a “stranger,” even one professionally trained on such matters. Even 
after a therapist-client relationship is established, unpacking complex 
emotions takes time and energy, and sometimes it can feel worse before 
it feels better. However, there is much to be gained through a 
constructive therapy process: empathy, social connection, and the relief 
that arises from authentic emotional expression.

*Mental health professionals as climate anxiety ‘first responders’*
In a way, mental health professionals are the EMTs, the first responders 
in the psychological realm of the climate crisis. Just as they are 
trained to support clients coping or dealing with existential issues 
such as illness, aging, and death, they are equipped to support clients 
in working on feelings arising from the climate situation.

Climate distress – including eco-anxiety or grief or panic or PTSD or 
intense sadness that arises from the loss of place or home (termed 
“solastalgia”) – for many can be overwhelming, difficult to comprehend, 
helping to fuel a sense of helplessness or loneliness. But it’s also a 
perfectly rational and healthy response to a degraded, unpredictable, 
and at-risk world. As author Britt Wray and clinician Andrew Bryant 
note, a successful therapy experience can result in an empowering 
response involving emotional work along with active efforts in the world 
outside.

In April 2021, the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, along 
with the Climate Psychiatry Alliance, launched a national database of 
Climate Aware Therapists to help connect the public to therapists who 
prioritize and recognize the impacts of climate change on mental health. 
Merritt Juliano, co-president of Climate Psychology Alliance of North 
America, describes the directory as a resource for people to “find 
mental health providers familiar with the multidimensional aspects of 
the climate crisis and its impacts on social and psychological 
well-being.” She points to the role of climate-aware therapists “to 
listen and validate a person’s thoughts, feelings and experiences rather 
than dismiss or pathologize them.” That is, climate distress is not a 
diagnosis but a response to how one feels adversely affected by real 
world events.

Van Susteren’s involvement in developing this resource was prompted by 
her receiving numerous calls from potential patients “desperate” to find 
psychiatrists or therapists sensitive to these issues. She said some 
patients felt invalidated or dismissed by other mental health 
professionals when they brought up their climate concerns.

*Allowing one’s feelings to ‘surface into consciousness’*
Indeed, a recent article reveals a concerning gap between the public’s 
desire to talk about climate distress, and therapists’ abilities to 
support them. While climate psychology is an emergent field, it is 
getting more thought and attention in the medical community as training 
programs and best practices are actively being developed. Most 
importantly, a client should be able to bring up the topic to an 
empathic audience and get the support that they need.

Climate aware therapists apply a range of approaches and tools, 
including their own theoretical orientations and treatment modalities, 
which they are familiar and comfortable with. Elizabeth Allured, also a 
co-president of Climate Psychology Alliance North America, points out 
that: “not everyone feels consciously distressed or brings up climate 
change in therapy. A climate-aware therapist holds in mind the larger 
environmental crisis we’re in, and allows feelings to surface into 
consciousness.”

Some people might feel reluctant to seek help, and it’s unfortunate that 
shame and stigma discourage many from doing so. But the truth is that 
many of us can benefit from some type of professional support: Just as a 
person seeks medical aid for a physical injury, they should be able to 
seek mental health support for emotional distress without judgment. 
Researchers have indicated that during the pandemic more and more 
Americans have accessed – and continue to access – therapy and 
counseling. Although every health care system has its own barriers to 
mental health treatment, such as wait lists and insurance-imposed limits 
on the number of sessions, in many communities, access to therapy can 
also be found through local hotlines and community clinics.

As climate psychologists will attest, we are living through an epoch of 
collective environmental trauma, and subsequent climate distress. Even 
for those among that increasingly shrinking number who are 
less-than-concerned, the distress of living in an increasingly 
unpredictable, hostile world will inevitably influence their daily 
lives. Acknowledging one’s feelings about climate change challenges, and 
talking about them not only benefits individuals and groups, but may 
spur broader climate engagement.

It’s sometimes said that when so much is at stake, so many must be 
involved. When we all participate in the conversation, to whatever 
extent we’re able, hope and connection bloom together.

*Editor’s note:  This research was led by the Yale Program on Climate 
Change Communication (publisher of this website) and by the Center for 
Climate Change Communications at George Mason University.
Ariella Cook-Shonkoff is a psychotherapist, writer, and art therapist in 
private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Robert Berley is a Seattle-based psychoanalytic psychologist and Adjunct 
Faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of 
Washington.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/09/anxious-about-the-climate-future-seen-a-climate-aware-therapist-lately/ 


- -

[Research Paper]
*Ecological grief and anxiety: the start of a healthy response **to 
climate change?*
There is increasing global awareness that the next
10 years must be a period of extensive and rapid
mitigation and adaptation to safeguard humanity
from the worst harms of the climate crisis. An urgent
need for action was recently underscored by three
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special
Reports: the Special Report on Global Warming of 1·5°C,
the Special Report on Climate Change and Land, and
the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a
Changing Climate. Similarly, the 2019 report of the Lancet
Countdown on Health and Climate Change1 highlighted
potentially catastrophic health risks for a child born
today if an adequate response to climate change does
not occur, including increased rates of food insecurity
and undernutrition, of diarrhoeal and infectious diseases,
and of complications from air pollution, and increased
morbidity and mortality from exposure to extreme
weather events (eg, heatwaves, flooding, wildfires,
and hurricanes).
  Despite the overwhelming scientific
evidence available and mounting public advocacy, at the
2019 UN Conference of the Parties negotiations, a small
group of governments seemed to block meaningful
progress, leading to inadequate outcomes. As the first
Production Gap report made clear in 2019, governments
still plan to produce approximately 120% more fossil
fuels than would be consistent with limiting warming
to 1·5°C...
More at -- 
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2542-5196(20)30144-3


[Looking carefully at adaptation - ]
*Transformative Adaptation Resources & Reading*
WELCOME TO TrAd! We hope our work-in-progress website will help you 
understand what TrAd is, what it aims to provide, who we are, and how to 
engage. We’d love to hear from you to find out what brought you here, 
and what we can do for each other – so before leaving this page please 
either use the Subscribe box at the bottom of the page or use the 
'contact us' box in the footer and we'll get in touch.

What is Transformational Adaptation?
TrAd, or Transformative Adaptation, is not an organisation but an 
approach which you can share . Perhaps your activities already embody 
aspects of TrAd!

The TrAd approach recognises there is now urgent need for us all to 
adapt to the certainty of a rapidly-changing planet, in a way that is 
transformative of our existing failed institutions, of ourselves and of 
our communities. Global governments, corporations and systems are all 
failing to respond sufficiently to the threats of climate breakdown and 
ecological destruction. It is up to us all to take the initiative, and 
vitally important that we interconnect existing efforts with new 
projects and creative ideas.
https://www.transformative-adaptation.com/


[Words, just words]
*Enough With The Climate Jargon: Scientists Aim For Clearer Messages On 
Global Warming*
September 8, 20215:13 AM ET
Rebecca Hersher at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., July 25, 2018. 
(photo by Allison Shelley) (Square)
REBECCA HERSHER

*Here's a sentence that's basically unintelligible to most people: 
Humans must mitigate global warming by pursuing an unprecedented 
transition to a carbon neutral economy.**
*
A recent study found that some of the most common terms in climate 
science are confusing to the general public. The study tested words that 
are frequently used in international climate reports, and it concluded 
that the most confusing terms were "mitigation," "carbon neutral" and 
"unprecedented transition."

"I think the main message is to avoid jargon," says Wändi Bruine de 
Bruin, a behavioral scientist at the University of Southern California 
and the lead author of the study. "That includes words that may seem 
like everyone should understand them."

For example, participants in the study mixed up the word "mitigation," 
which commonly refers to efforts that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 
with the word "mediation," which is a way to resolve disputes. And even 
simple terms such as "carbon" can be misleading, the study found. 
Sometimes, carbon is shorthand for carbon dioxide. Other times, it's 
used to refer to multiple greenhouse gases.

"As experts in a particular field, we may not realize which of the words 
that we're using are jargon," says Bruine de Bruin.

The study is the latest indication that scientists need to do a better 
job communicating about global warming, especially when the intended 
audience is the general public.

Clear climate communication gets more important every day because 
climate change is affecting every part of life on Earth. Nurses, 
doctors, farmers, teachers, engineers and business executives need 
reliable, accessible information about how global warming is affecting 
their patients, crops, students, buildings and businesses.

And extreme weather this summer — from floods to fires, hurricanes to 
droughts — underscores the urgency of clear climate communication.

"I think more and more people are getting concerned because of the 
extreme weather events that we're seeing around us," says Bruine de 
Bruin. "I hope that this study is useful to climate scientists, but also 
to journalists and anybody who communicates about climate science."

Better communication is a mandate for the team of scientists currently 
working on the next National Climate Assessment, which is the most 
comprehensive, public-facing climate change report for the U.S. The 
fifth edition of the assessment comes out in late 2023.

"You shouldn't need an advanced degree or a decoder ring to figure out a 
National Climate Assessment," says Allison Crimmins, the director of the 
assessment.

Crimmins says one of her top priorities is to make the information in 
the next U.S. report clear to the general public. Climate scientists and 
people who communicate about climate science have a responsibility to 
think about the terminology they use. "While the science on climate 
change has advanced, so has the science of climate communication, 
especially how we talk about risk," she says.

Crimmins says one way to make the information clearer is to present it 
in many different ways. For example, a chapter on drought could include 
a dense, technical piece of writing with charts and graphs. That section 
would be intended for scientists and engineers. But the same information 
could be presented as a video explaining how drought affects agriculture 
in different parts of the U.S., and a social media post with an even 
more condensed version of how climate change is affecting drought.

The United Nations has also tried to make its climate change reports 
more accessible.

The most recent report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change was more than 3,900 pages long and highly technical, but it also 
included a two-page summary that stated the main points in simple 
language, such as, "It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed 
the atmosphere, ocean and land."

But even the simple summary is rife with words that can be confusing. 
For example, one of the so-called headline statements from the IPCC 
report is, "With further global warming, every region is projected to 
increasingly experience concurrent and multiple changes in climatic 
impact-drivers." Basically, the climate will keep changing everywhere as 
Earth gets hotter.
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/08/1033362163/enough-with-the-climate-jargon-scientists-aim-for-clearer-messages-on-global-war

- -

[Research paper has some nuggets]
*Public understanding of climate change terminology *
Wändi Bruine de Bruin  & Lila Rabinovich ...
Published Online August 2021
Abstract
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other institutions 
communicate about climate change to diverse audiences without a 
background in climate science, including the general public. The 
effectiveness of these communications depends in part on how well the 
presented terminology is understood. In qualitative interviews, we 
examined how US residents interpreted key terms drawn from IPCC reports, 
including tipping point, unprecedented transition, carbon neutral, 
carbon dioxide removal, adaptation, mitigation, sustainable development, 
and abrupt change. We recruited twenty participants with diverse views 
on climate change from a nationally representative sample. We identified 
common themes and misunderstandings. Overall, 88% of the themes arose by 
the tenth interview, and no new themes arose after the seventeenth 
interview. Mitigation, carbon neutral, and unprecedented transition were 
perceived as the most difficult to understand. Adaptation and abrupt 
change were perceived as the easiest to understand. However, even if a 
term appeared to be understood, participants were not always clear about 
how it applied to climate change. Participants tended to draw on their 
mental models of non-climate contexts where terms had different 
meanings. Reading the terms in the context of sentences taken from 
communication materials was not always helpful due to the use of complex 
language...
https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s10584-021-03183-0?sharing_token=BjiYaOYTk1LQCEBJljE8wve4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY6P53CJY43T-w-_jBBFxNif-xumfesTbuTZxqSw7p0Uwws7HXQFIz9N4arWkWZcrqE80CVYHsVYlyjrpICyLXsF3Wco-Y3S0PIIGr2CJ6TnLrJdh3MAaAqWep0r0o4qMnI%3D

- -

[To the big source]
*Annex I: Glossary*
IPCC SR15 glossary can be accessed directly
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/SR15_AnnexI_Glossary.pdf



[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming September  8, 2003*
The EPA denies a petition by the International Center for Technology 
Assessment to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, 
setting off a four-year legal battle that culminates in the Supreme 
Court's Massachusetts v. EPA ruling.
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/FR-2003-09-08/03-22764/content-detail.html


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