YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I struggle to put together an "I feel" statement about climate change.

Now, if someone else wants to doubt or deny climate change based on evidence they find compelling, fine.

I will live my life according to the evidence I find compelling.

I will try some "I feel" statements, even though words are inadequate:

I feel fear that climate change cannot be stopped or reversed.

I feel anxiety that climate change is going to be really really bad.

I feel fear enough that climate change is an excellent reason for me not to have children.

I feel fear that I can't/won't feel genuine fear about how bad climate change is.


I experienced the outer edge of Sandy, and it sucked.

When I turned on CNN and saw tornadoes in Oklahoma, I thought it was a week-in-review news story. No. It was last week, last night, and tonight.

My friend told me about this 90s movie called "Masque of the Red Death": in it a plague had struck the land and people were starting to die. Despite, or because of this mortality, they hosted a big fancy ball, where everyone danced and had fun, willfully ignoring the terrible truth.

Can I feel fear? Am I able to be anxious about climate change?

I don't know.

I read the climate change blogs of the scientists themselves. What is most alarming is the uncertainty. In many ways, uncertainty is more dangerous than perfect knowledge of a very devastating negative outcome, because you can use the uncertainty, irrationally, to postpone necessary mitigation.

On an individual level, being a privileged 1st world citizen in a world with uncertainty about climate change is probably a better situation than being a Soviet Union citizen during WWII.

All the best to you.

Hello Manny & Oak,

Just stumbled across this while looking for somethings else.

This is one of the things I think about quite a lot, along with so many of the other "macro" topics in the news. Always near the forefront, unless I'm absorbed in something else

And you summarized things pretty well Manny.
Not sure how I would do in a war zone...
(And I have my own internal one most days )

Interesting topic i must say, even if it dates back to 2013.

I think the fear of the unknown is really a driving force currently. People are looking for hope, looking for peaceful days.

Also when we take into account weather can effect peoples moods from all aspects of life. When small villages or cities rely on crops and harvest that doesn't amount to anything due to climate, there has to be someone to blame. Media worker purposely go out to seek information that can be twisted or midread. That in itself snowballs to mass hysteria.

I recall flying over Greenland many years ago and looking down onto the coastline seeing pods of whales. I felt so small, so insignificant. Yet their beauty and grace became an image i often think about when fond memories come to find. What animal on this earth would look at humans with the same feelings if able?

New Zealand is such a small country, however the days have long gone of the clean green environment. Yes, don't get me wrong we have a beautiful landscape however just this past weekend there was dozens of young people driving their vans/utes and offroaders over a protected bird esteray. There was little done to stop it and no fines given, just a warning. I don't recall this lack of respect on mass back in the 80's. Mindset and uncertainty of the world has formed so many problems and i am sorry to say the media have a massive part in this.

That is my thoughts anyway!!!

there were dozens of young people driving their vans/utes and off-roaders over a protected bird estuary. There was little done to stop it and no fines given, just a warning. I don't recall this lack of respect on mass back in the 80's.

People are so discouraging and out of touch. So much motorized obsession.
This has been going on for a long time.

"I think, therefore I am"?

No -

"I make noise, therefore I am" is more like it....

Thank you for bumping this old thread, SnoringDog.

1. Here is a chilling article I read later that summer:

https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/miami-how-rising-sea-levels-endanger-south-florida-200956/

(There is some filler/preamble, so feel free to start at the paragraph that begins: "Even more than Silicon Valley, Miami embodies the central technological myth of our time – that nature can not only be tamed but made irrelevant.")

(Also, one can skirt the paywall by copying that URL into a private browser, if one is so ethically inclined.)

2. My friends report that neighborhoods are being abandoned in Norfolk, Virginia.

3. Though this New Yorker article doesn't have anything to do with climate change, if you like to be deeply chilled by a potential disaster, look no further than this iconic article about the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one