We have just come through a winter, with little snow, 52 days above 0° as of March 5th, and record temperatures of 18.8°on March 4th and 5th. This is unnatural and deeply worrying. Has winter, as we’ve known it, disappeared? According to senior climatologist David Phillips, we have experienced the warmest winter, locally, and worldwide, since record-keeping.
Climate change, as a result of human activity, is indisputable, our eco-anxiety ramping up with every wildfire, flood, temperature record, and melting ice cap. This takes a toll on our mental and emotional health. According to psychotherapist Caroline Hickman – “The conspiracy theorists are reassuring. If you can’t tolerate anxiety, you will then spin off into believing somebody who will give you false promises.” (Toronto Star)
Eco-anxiety can drive depression, incapacitate and debilitate us. Psychotherapy, or Reinhold Neibuhr’s “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” may alleviate some of our anxiety.
The entitled will always invoke their right to overconsume endlessly, unconcerned about climate change. As for the rest of us, we can only control our response to it, to change the things that we can. Sarah Ray, author of “A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety” – “I’d say as much as half of our climate anxiety has to do with the feeling of not being efficacious to do something about it,” “The thing that reduces the climate anxiety is being part of a collective… where people care as much as you do. You’re not the only one.” (Toronto Star)
Our politicians control the levers of climate change policy. We must vote for politicians who pledge to enact effective climate change legislation, while we continue to push back against those who don’t. We can become activists and join the like-minded in environmental/climate change organizations – Environment Hamilton, Hamilton.350, Save our Streams, Action 13, and others. There is strength in numbers, but, in spite of all the evidence, too many of us remain stubbornly indifferent to the crisis. We discovered our strength when we came together and successfully pushed back against Doug Ford’s greenbelt carve-outs, but this is exhausting work.
The fossil fuel industry has resisted all efforts to transition to carbon-free energy. Fossil fuel producers are the drug dealers and we, the users, hooked on their products.. Fossil fuels are not as deadly as oxycontin or fentanyl but are just as addictive. Enjoying windfall profits, the industry won’t reduce the supply as long as we keep buying, happy to feed our addiction. The industry and governments have their own addictions, to money and power. We feel frustrated and betrayed when politicians renege on climate change promises, when they throw roadblocks in front of green energy projects, propose unnecessary gas plants, block carbon taxes and remain beholden to the fossil fuel industry
Breaking our addiction, if we choose to do so, requires determination. There is no fossil fuel equivalent of naloxone to help us on our way. As consumers, we have choices, depending on our circumstances and budgets. Stop buying gas guzzlers.. If you can afford it, take advantage of incentives and replace your gas furnace with a heat pump, better insulate your home, installrooftop solar, support the carbon tax. In the longer term this will save you money and stop feeding the fossil fuel industry.
The future we choose” suggests that we have a future, and we have choices. We have and we do, but the fossil fuels industry and our governments have to be on board. There are too many self-serving agendas in play. We can all act by holding our governments to account. Vote and speak up.