[✔️] September 20, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Anxiety, Self care, Re-forestation with wrong tree, Air pollution, Double dealing Ad Men, Dutch living, 2013 Carbon from power plants.
Richard Pauli
Richard at CredoandScreed.com
Wed Sep 20 09:01:48 EDT 2023
/*September *//*20, 2023*/
/[ NYTimes on climate anxiety ]/
*How Do We Feel About Global Warming? It’s Called Eco-Anxiety.*
After a summer of intense heat, raging fires and catastrophic floods, a
term for pervading dread about climate change and other environmental
crises is having its moment.
By Jason Horowitz
Reporting from Rome
Sept. 16, 2023
Italy was in the grip of extreme heat waves, hellish wildfires and
biblical downpours, and a nerve-wracked young Italian woman wept as she
stood in a theater to tell the country’s environment minister about her
fears of a climatically apocalyptic future.
“I personally suffer from eco-anxiety,” Giorgia Vasaperna, 27, said, her
eyes welling and her hands fidgeting, at a children’s film festival in
July. “I have no future because my land burns.” She doubted the sanity
of bringing children into an infernal world and asked, “Aren’t you
scared for your children, for your grandchildren?”
Then the minister, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, started crying.
“I have a responsibility toward all of you,” he said, visibly choked up.
“I have a responsibility toward my grandchildren.”
Europe is a continent on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
In Greece, nerves are shot as weeks of blazes raging out of control have
given way to flooding that has submerged villages, washed away cars and
left dead bodies floating in the streets. Italians are frazzled as a
summer of incinerating heat waves lingers and fear mounts over the
return of hailstones the size of handballs.
A group of young Portuguese, exhausted by sweltering temperatures and
spreading fires, are suing European nations for causing the climate
change that they claim has damaged their mental health, much as their
counterparts in Montana sued the state.
And, in a common refrain of the eco-anxiety era, it gets worse.
The same storm that hit Greece gained strength over the Mediterranean
and pummeled Libya with flooding that killed thousands.
A recent United Nations report delivered the bad news that the world was
way off track in meeting it pledges under the 2015 Paris Agreement to
limit greenhouse gas emissions. Polls have registered a deepening
malaise. The specter of burning in nuclear fires started by the war in
Ukraine has moved to the back burner.
In an era of ever-increasing anxiety, now is the summer — and autumn —
of our disquiet, and eco-anxiety, a catchall term to describe
all-encompassing environmental concerns, is having its moment.
While it is not clinically recognized as a pathology, or included in the
latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, experts say the feeling of gloom and doom prompted by all of
the inescapable images of planetary gloom and doom is becoming more
widespread.
“Climate change is moving faster than psychiatry for sure and also
psychology,” said Dr. Paolo Cianconi, a member of the ecology psychiatry
and mental health division of the World Psychiatry Association, who is
publishing a book with colleagues on the topic this month. He said that
the term eco-anxiety had existed for more than a decade, but that it was
“circulating very much” these days, and that the condition would only
increase in the future.
“When people start to be worried about the planet, they don’t know that
they have eco-anxiety,” he said. “When they see this thing has a name,
then they understand what to call it.”
Dr. Cianconi and some of his colleagues published a paper in June in the
Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine that mentioned the terms
“eco-PTSD,” “eco-burnout,” “eco-phobia” and “eco-rage.”
But the focus remained on eco-anxiety, which they broadly defined as a
“chronic fear of environmental doom” suffered by firsthand victims of
traumatic climate change events; people whose livelihoods or way of
living is threatened by climate change; climate activists or people who
work in the field of climate change; people fed images of climate change
through the news media; and people prone to anxiety.
Among the characteristics of eco-anxiety, they cited “frustration,
powerlessness, feeling overwhelmed, hopelessness, helplessness.” There
could be a combination of “clinically relevant symptoms, such as worry,
rumination, irritability, sleep disturbance, loss of appetite, panic
attacks.”
Sound familiar?
“Already I have Latin, Greek and French exams coming up — now I have
this climate anxiety, too,” said Sara Maggiolo, 16, as she walked past
the psychiatric wing of a hospital in Rome on a recent afternoon that
cracked 100 degrees. Hardly anyone was outside except for a few tourists
who clung to the shade.
Earlier in the summer, Ms. Maggiolo said, she had visited the Dolomite
Alps with her family and was saddened to see workers protecting glaciers
from the sun with white tarps. “Watching TV and seeing everything burn,”
she said. “It’s hard to stay interested in world problems when there
won’t be a world. Every summer will be hotter. It will always be worse.”
Psychiatrists say that for many people who have been put through the
wringer over the past decade, the climate extremes are one crisis too many.
Within Europe, “back to back” crises have left Greeks particularly
vulnerable to mental health problems, said Christos Liapis, a prominent
Greek psychiatrist. He said it was not just the fires and the flooding.
The 2010 financial crisis, the 2015 migrant crisis, Covid, inflation and
energy crises took their toll, too, “and finally the climate crisis,
which hit Greece particularly hard,” he said.
“Constant stress has a deeper impact on mental health than acute
short-lived stress,” Mr. Liapis said. “The person who’s already
struggling due to higher rent will be harder hit when his home floods.”
On Thursday, the Greek Health Ministry said it would put in place a
“comprehensive program of interventions for psychosocial support” for
victims of the floods and send mobile units of mental health
professionals to the afflicted areas.
A few days after the Italian environmental minister got choked up, the
newspaper la Repubblica commissioned a survey about the toll that the
apocalyptic weather was having on Italians. “Not only the young suffer
from eco-anxiety,” the paper declared, with the poll finding that 72
percent of Italians were pessimistic for the future and convinced that
the environmental situation would deteriorate in the coming years.
Some, frustrated with the paralysis of their governments, have turned to
higher powers for a source of strength.
At the World Youth Day event in Lisbon this summer, Pope Francis told
hundreds of thousands of young Catholics to take action to protect the
earth and beat back climate change. Many of the participants took his
words to heart, especially as temperatures climbed and the authorities
warned about dangerous conditions.
“We are afraid of this temperature problem,” Rita Sacramento, 20, from
Porto, Portugal, said as she and her friends trudged through one of the
most sweltering days of the summer. She said she had seen people faint
around her.
“It’s not normal,” Ms. Sacramento said. “When it is cold it is more
cold. When it is hot it is more hot. Years pass and it’s hotter.”
Some experts said that for mentally healthy people, a touch of
eco-anxiety could be an engine for action.
“In this moment eco-anxiety is something that will bring people to act
in a positive way,” said Giampaolo Perna, a psychiatrist and expert in
anxiety at the Humanitas San Pio X hospital in Milan. “And try to
protect the environment.”
But he added that while climate fears were not yet a recognized
pathology or driving people into therapy, they “could be a sort of
stimulus” for a crisis in someone who already has a general anxiety
disorder.
“If this becomes chronic,” Dr. Perna added, “in the long run this will
not be healthy.”
Some have already moved on to a new stage of planetary grief.
“It’s not so much anxiety as despair,” said Leonardo Giordano, 27, who
works in a health food restaurant in Rome. “Anxiety would be if you have
the chance to do something. I think we are beyond those times.”
He added with a shrug: “My family thinks I have a future to worry about.
But I think I don’t.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/16/world/europe/italy-greece-eco-anxiety.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/16/world/europe/italy-greece-eco-anxiety.html?unlocked_article_code=0sVZm_RM5owK1kar3CF4uZp1FFH0B7YiM2wkFPTYFcVef0HhlT3BZOMUVLPXkWobPOay50E67QZux3lAxqzbGOkk21KoVBX8jEmxb-3H1Ji9vB4m4tdTMOTskWLfsJR27oMlGbmxw7FCpXaYNOX9KjVbzE05Pzf5vK2f1xyZOfOnyx0VGznjlQ-TQHp4LiwewIzlPSMZc2PYjb5YfsV5akkzhnfCrQby0lP5YwIqIZVcGx42rZSnizWlUEWReSIZH_Z8QxB3RTHpeWhzrIOnWTHyqc0_56UkKfUyroFTVmCEfwlyyQmwns7wy2gdxUChOnlSEpWJnWxz88dfxJo57AlWf-Mr73U&smid=url-share
- -
/[ YouTube Audio - The Ezra Klein Show - challenges the notion of Self
Care ]/
*A Skeptical Look at ‘Self-Care’*
New York Times Podcasts
Sep 19, 2023 The Ezra Klein Show
Love it or hate it, self-care has transformed from a radical feminist
concept into a multibillion-dollar industry. But the wellness boom
doesn’t seem to be making a dent in Americans’ stress levels. In 2021,
34 percent of women reported feeling burned out at work, along with 26
percent of men.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, a psychiatrist, has observed how wellness culture
fails her patients, who she says are often burned out because of
systemic failures, from the stresses that come with financial
precariousness to the lack of paid family leave. In her book “Real
Self-Care: A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness (Crystals,
Cleanses, and Bubble Baths Not Included)
(https://www.poojalakshmin.com/realsel... she encourages people to look
beyond superficial fixes — the latest juice cleanses, yoga workshops,
luxury bamboo sheets — to feel better. Instead, she argues that real
self-care requires embracing internal work, which she outlines as four
practices: setting boundaries, practicing self-compassion, aligning your
values and exercising power. Lakshmin argues that when you practice real
self-care, you not only take care of yourself, but you can also plant
the seeds for change in your community.
In this conversation, the guest host, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and
Lakshmin discuss how the pandemic opened up a larger conversation about
parental burnout; how countries with more robust social safety nets
frame care as a right, not a benefit; why it’s fair to understand
burnout as a type of societal “betrayal”; how to practice
boundary-setting and why it can feel uncomfortable to do so; the
convenient allure of “faux self-care”; and more.
This episode was hosted by Tressie McMillan Cottom, a columnist for
Times Opinion, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill, and the author of “Thick: And Other Essays.” Cottom also writes a
newsletter (https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/t...) for Times Opinion
that offers a sociologist’s perspective on culture, politics and the
economics of our everyday lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql-zXf2_X7k
/[ Re-forestation NYT Opinion ]/
*We Thought We Were Saving the Planet, but We Were Planting a Time Bomb*
Sept. 15, 2023
By Claire Cameron
- -
Our job was to dig holes and plant black spruce seedlings. I carried
three bags of them, one on each hip and one in the back. In steel-toe
boots, I broke through shallow puddles that were covered with
translucent films of ice, wallowed through mud and crawled over tree
stumps. I had duct tape wrapped around each finger and on both heels to
cover up the blisters. When I asked someone why our saplings were always
spaced six feet apart, the answer came back with a smirk: so the cutting
shears would fit between the grown trunks when they got cut down again...
- -
Much later, I learned that the trees we were planting, black spruce, are
so combustible that firefighters call them gas on a stick. The trees
evolved to burn: They have flammable sap, and their resin-filled cones
open up when heated to drop seeds into charred soil. In “Fire Weather: A
True Story From a Hotter World,” an investigation of the devastating
wildfire in 2016 in Fort McMurray, Alberta, John Vaillant laid out how
climate change had turned some forests into combustible time bombs,
where “drought conditions, noonday heat and a stiff wind” can turn a
black spruce tree into “something closer to a blowtorch.”..
The dangerous mistake we were making gets to the heart of what people
often get wrong about environmental stewardship: the notion that, no
matter how rapacious or careless we are, we can always dig or plant our
way out through sweat, pluck and industry. Rather than leave a forest
intact, we clear-cut it, then plant a new one. My troupe of planters
thought we were making things better. I spent this summer watching that
youthful idealism literally going up in smoke...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/opinion/wildfires-treeplanting-timebomb.html
/[ statistics journalism ]/
*Where Air Pollution Is Cutting Lives Short*
by Anna Fleck,
Sep 15, 2023
The average person on the planet could live 2.3 years longer if global
particulate pollution levels were reduced to meet the World Health
Organization guideline. This is according to research carried out by the
Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and published in
the Air Quality Life Index 2023.
In many countries, this figure is far worse. Bangladesh recorded the
worst PM2.5 levels worldwide at 74 ug/m3, a stark contrast to the WHO
recommendation of a maximum of 5 ug/m3. If these levels of pollution
persist, resident’s lives are estimated to be cut short by an average of
6.8 years. The next three worst offenders are also in South Asia, with
India ranking second (5.3 years), Nepal in third (4.6 years) and
Pakistan in fourth place (3.9 years).
China has seen a marked improvement in recent years. Since 2013, the
country has extended its inhabitants’ average life expectancy by 2.2
years - again, so long as these reductions in pollution are sustained.
This has been thanks to a push to improve air quality in the nation.
However, levels are still dangerous enough to take around 2.5 years off
people’s lives.
African countries are also overrepresented in the top nine roundup with
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, and Republic of
the Congo all included. According to the report, the DRC's regions of
Mai-Ndombe, Kwilu and Kasaï are all experiencing levels of air pollution
that are losing its residents up to four years of life. This is partly
due to waste burning, mining and practices such as cement manufacturing.
The United States ranks comparatively lower with its residents’ lives
shortened by 3.6 months. As with all countries surveyed, there are
considerable differences depending on the location within the country.
For example, in 2021, 20 out of the top 30 most polluted counties were
in California due to wildfires...
- -
https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/30841.jpeg
https://www.statista.com/chart/30841/average-life-expectancy-gains-if-air-pollution-rules-met/
/[ advertising aims for the subconscious - ADWeek confirms the deception
on the battleground ]/
*Nearly 300 Agencies—and 6 Major Holding Companies—Are Working for
Fossil Fuel Clients*
Clean Creatives released its thiard annual F-List
By Kathryn Lundstrom
Even as climate change becomes more devastatingly apparent—and Big Oil’s
role in it increasingly irrefutable—major polluters like Exxon, Shell,
BP, Chevron and Saudi Aramco still have the world’s biggest advertising
and public relations firms in their corner.
Industry activist group Clean Creatives today released its third annual
F-List, which names 294 agencies that worked for fossil fuel companies
in 2022 and 2023. It identified those relationships through public
disclosures, lobbying reports, agency websites, awards submissions,
portfolio sites and LinkedIn.
The F-List is “proof that we still have a problem that needs to be
solved,” said Nayantara Dutta, researcher for Clean Creatives and author
of the report. “Despite all of the carbon targets and net zero pledges,
the advertising and marketing industry still promotes fossil fuel
polluters.”
*Building fossil-free momentum*
Founded in 2020 as a campaign of Fossil Free Media, Clean Creatives aims
to cut fossil fuel companies off from the talent and expertise of the
advertising and PR industry.
It argues that given Big Oil’s track record of involving its ad and PR
partners in its efforts to hide critical science from the public, lie
about its impact on climate, and intentionally sow disinformation
related to global warming, agencies that care about climate would do
well to stay away.
So far, over 700 agencies, 1,900 individual creatives and 55 creators
have signed Clean Creatives’ pledge to turn down work for fossil fuel
companies, trade associations or front groups.
As the group was researching this year’s F-List, it noticed several
changes. First, agencies were removing webpages highlighting their work
for fossil fuel clients. Second, that work for carbon-intensive clients
is migrating from big agencies to smaller, boutique, regional shops.
“Both of those trends are just a sign of the stigma increasing,” said
Duncan Meisel, executive director of Clean Creatives. “[Working for
fossil fuel clients is] less palatable, less exciting, less interesting
to young creatives. And so you kind of have to hide it.”
The report demonstrates progress toward its goal in some areas.
VaynerMedia and Media.Monks split with all fossil fuel clients after
they were named in the 2021 and 2022 F-List reports.
But there are major sticking points in others. The six major ad agency
holding companies, for example, have at least a few fossil fuel clients,
while others have dozens. Clean Creatives did not find any fossil fuel
contracts associated with Stagwell agencies.
The world’s largest PR firm, Edelman, despite reportedly cutting ties
with clients like Exxon and Standard Bank, continues to work for Shell
and TotalEnergies, both of which have rolled back climate commitments in
the past year.
“We have instituted a client acceptance process that is informed by our
climate principles,” an Edelman spokesperson shared the following via
email. “All staff underwent—and new joiners must take—a mandatory
climate training program, developed in conjunction with Columbia
University’s Climate School, to immerse themselves in the science of
climate change and our approach. Our board-level climate and
sustainability committee reviews our progress quarterly and we are also
advised by an Independent Council of Climate Experts.”
*Holding company holdouts*
WPP had 55 fossil fuel contracts identified by Clean Creatives, the most
of the six major ad agency holding companies. Omnicom had 39 contracts,
the report said, while IPG had 25 and Publicis had 11. Havas and Dentsu
each had five fossil fuel contracts, according to the report.
WPP, Omnicom and Publicis did not respond to Adweek’s request for
comment. IPG, Dentsu and Havas responded with an explanation of how they
engage their fossil fuel clients:
“A small number of IPG agencies create marketing for carbon-intensive
companies that have been clients for some time,” explained Tom
Cunningham, svp of global communications at IPG. “In 2022, we began to
proactively review the climate impacts of prospective clients that
operate in the oil, energy and utility sectors before accepting new
work. Since that time and as a result of that policy, we have, on
multiple occasions, turned down potential new business opportunities.”
“We approach companies on a case-by-case basis, as no two clients are
the same, and some companies are on a longer transformation journey than
others,” said Danika Gregg, global sustainability communications lead at
Dentsu. “We are committed to partnering with all clients who share our
values and are committed to tackling the challenges within their
business, and helping them to accelerate their progress.”
“We are invested in supporting all companies in their communications
provided that they are actively engaged in a transformation journey,”
Havas said in a statement. “We launched a mandatory training program for
all our employees on ways to detect and avoid greenwashing, prioritize
low-carbon impact campaigns and understand the impact of their work on
consumer behavior.”
While it’s clear that holding companies’ relationships with Big Oil run
deep, the campaign has made waves within the industry in a relatively
short period of time, and that could lead to pressure from more powerful
forces.
“A huge number of people outside of the industry hadn’t heard of any of
these holding companies [prior to Clean Creatives’ campaign],” said
Solitaire Townsend, co-founder of sustainability-focused agency Futerra.
“A lot of activists now have.”
https://www.adweek.com/media/nearly-300-agencies-and-6-major-holding-companies-are-working-for-fossil-fuel-clients/
[ Information from the great Rollie Williams -- a video to help us
understand our predicament. And fun to watch.]
*Dutch Cities are Better for the Environment (and my sanity)*
https://youtu.be/cO6txCZpbsQ?si=UvS4LHtYFbJynAyS
/[The news archive - looking back]/
/*September 20, 2013*/
September 20, 2013: The Obama administration proposes new EPA
regulations intended to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from new power
plants in the US.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/13/epa-to-announce-carbonlimitsonnewpowerplants.html
=========================================================
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