
'Climate grief': The growing emotional toll of climate change - uptown
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/climate-grief-growing-emotional-toll-climate-change-n946751
======
diafygi
This article is likely to get heavily down-weighted on HN, so before that
happens, I guess it's that time again for a what-can-you-do-about-it post :)

To start, here's my favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until
it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"

==So what can you do about it?==

I work in cleantech, and you should, too! Solar and wind are economical, so
now the biggest issue is scaling them up. That means tons and tons of problem
solving, which means great tech and engineering jobs!

If you think about it, the switch to renewables means we need to deal with
situations where the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, yet still
keep the lights on. That means you have to build in a ton of storage and load
control, which means good communication and analysis, which means software!
Something like half of the impact of the energy transition will be done
through software optimizing the deployment and operation of clean energy
assets.

Anyway, please check out my previous comments on recommendations when looking
for climate impact work[1].

Also, working in cleantech can significantly reduce the feelings described in
this article. Think of it like exercise. By working at it, your body naturally
replaces anxiety with optimism and motivation. Physically doing something to
fight your anxiety will make you feel better.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127154)

~~~
srdev
Is there much in the way of software development and data engineering? I
clicked on some of your links but the focus was on engineering jobs involved
with building the physical infrastructure, which sort-of matches my
expectations. But it also means theres not much I can reasonably do to
contribute.

~~~
diafygi
Absolutely! Most distributed battery storage (Stem, Advanced Microgrid, etc.)
and building energy management companies (Carbon Lighthouse, Siemens, etc.)
have software divisions that focus on data analysis tools for their customers
(think energy dashboards and reports). Also, most grid operators (CAISO,
etc.), utilities (PG&E, etc.), and utility vendors (AutoGrid, etc.) have data
analysis divisions that focus on figuring out how we can keep the grid running
while ramping up renewables. Finally, regulators (Dept of Energy, public
utility commissions, city managers, etc.) are in desperate need of data
science talent to help them understand all this new energy advancements that
are going on (often at policy hearings utilities are saying one technical
thing, distributed energy companies are saying another technical thing, and
the panel of regulators have no idea what the technical implications of all
this back-and-forth is).

Hope that helps! Maybe you can try searching typical software job boards
(Indeed, etc.) for your language of choice + keywords (clean energy, solar,
renewables, smart grid, climate change, etc.).

------
rdtsc
> “The emotional reaction of my kids was severe,” she told NBC News. “There
> was a lot of crying. They told me, 'We know what’s coming, and it’s going to
> be really rough.’ “

It depends how she presented the report to her children. Did she just let them
watch the news or read it to them. Children pick up the emotional state and
anxiety of their parents, and they don't necessarily know how to deal with it.

If her children are having panic attacks over it, not sure global warming is
to blame as much as she is. If there wasn't this issue chances are her
children would be having panic attacks over globalization, open air slave
markets in Libya, how police treat minorities, famine, etc.

~~~
Flozzin
I agree.

I'm not saying you down play the threat, but you have to realize that children
are not adults. Almost everything is a new experience to them. And they do not
have the tools in order to deal with the emotions.

I was pretty annoyed when my partner's 2 kids came home from school in a
complete tizzy over the presidential election. I'm not sure if it was from
their friends or their teachers. But they were practically crying, thinking
everything was going to fall apart.(It wasn't from either of us)

You have to be very careful about how and what you tell to kids. Especially
since something like the presidential election or climate change just isn't
something they can truly have an affect on yet.

~~~
bryanlarsen
I remember being completely devastated when I learned that the sun was going
to explode in 5 billion years time.

~~~
Flozzin
That's funny. That still makes me sad to this day. But I was pretty broken up
over it too. Somehow the fact that I will have been long dead did not matter.

------
caublestone
In decline and fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbons focuses a lot on the people’s
climate fears. The people believed that there was nothing that could be done
and that they deserved nature’s wrath.

In the 1600s, Lisbon was leveled by an earthquake. Some thought that God was
punishing them others saw it as an opportunity to rebuild and grow stronger.
Today, Lisbon is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

I pray for people to end the fear and believe in a bigger future. Happy new
year.

------
dbingham
I don't think anyone commenting on this post who is downplaying the reaction
has really grappled with what we're up against here.

I may work as a software engineer, but my degree is in physics. I've read the
reports, as well as a lot of other researchers comments on climate. We're in
real trouble. Frankly, panic attacks are an entirely justified and justifiable
reaction, if not the most productive.

The IPCC, which has consistently been proven to have been overly optimistic
about climate change, is sounding a drastic alarm. They're saying we need to
cut carbon by 45% in the next decade across the board or face "catastrophic"
consequences. As if nearly semi-annual thousand year hurricane events and the
west coast in flames weren't already catastrophic consequences.

Reducing carbon emissions by 45% means making half the cars on the road
electric or getting them off the road entirely in 10 years. It means
converting half of our power system to solar, wind, nuclear, or hydro in 10
years. It means forcing carbon producing industry to cut emissions by half in
ten years, and getting half the people who use home heating oil to use
alternatives in the next ten years. And if we fall short in one area, we need
to make it up in another. And this needs to happen globally.

To be brutally honest, we're _not_ going to hit that target. Period. It's just
not going to happen. The level and speed of change that needs to happen is
effectively out of reach. We've, realistically, already locked in catastrophic
consequences.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Every tiny bit of progress we make
helps reduce the consequences we face and could potentially save lives. I'm,
most likely, going to be running for city council in my city on a climate
response platform that involves building out the transit, bike, and pedestrian
infrastructure -- disincentivizing driving in the process -- and finding ways
to get solar panels on people's roofs that don't require the local power
company's consent. Who knows whether I'll win or not, but at least I can force
the conversation.

You can do the same. It doesn't matter how small or insignificant your town
may seem, every little bit helps. A lot of people think this is going to take
national action, and they're not wrong, but it's also going to take local
action. And we can't afford to wait for the national action.

We need to build infrastructure that allows people to forgo driving. We need
to build dense housing that makes it easy for people to live with in walking
or biking distance of their work and the amenities they need. We need to get
people using solar and wind to power their homes. We can do these things at
the local level. In fact, most of things things _have_ to happen at the local
level. Even if we end up with a federal green new deal program, we're going to
have to enact these things locally.

Again, we're not going to hit the target and we're going to be facing
catastrophic consequences. If you're in a coastal region, think about getting
out now. If you're in southern Florida -- seriously, get out now. Find a new
community and start putting down roots. The IPCC thinks we're not going to
have to worry about Florida until sometime around 2080 or 2100, but the IPCC
has consistently been wrong. James Hansen's team's finding, which suggests we
could lose most of Florida as early as 2050 keeps getting replicated.

Luckily, for the communities not at risk of annihilation the things they need
to do to prevent climate change are also the best ways to prepare for the
consequences: build lots of dense, walkable housing so that we can absorb the
migrations with out emitting carbon in transportation. Build large resilient
local food systems. Get people using renewables.

We pretty much know what we have to do -- we have to totally transform our
society -- and we know how we have to do it. The issue is over coming the
inertia and building the political will to do it.

So you can totally be forgiven for having panic attacks (and for the love of
all that is holy, don't you dare make fun of people who are experiencing them
-- those people are accurately grappling with reality while you're in denial),
but do your best to get through them and then just get to work. We know what
we have to do. Lets do our best to get it done.

~~~
zepto
Serious question - if we aren’t going to hit the target and therefore are
going to face serious consequences, wouldn’t we be better off preparing for
the consequences than futilely wasting our efforts trying to prevent them _and
also_ being unprepared for them when they arrive?

~~~
c0nducktr
By trying to prevent them, we lessen their effects.

~~~
zepto
Do we? By how much?

Sounds like we still need to prepare for the effects.

~~~
c0nducktr
By how much would depend on what is done, and I didn't imply we didn't need to
prepare for them. We should do both.

~~~
zepto
Should we? Perhaps not if how much turns out to only be a little.

------
B1FF_PSUVM
Back in 1989, the late Gore Vidal wrote an essay titled "Cue the Green God,
Ted" (Ted Koppel, TV anchor-critter at the time.)

Basically outlining how the 'green' cause would serve to keep order. He could
see it coming ...

------
vixen99
As in
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/arge...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/argentina/7344329/Baby-
survives-parents-global-warming-suicide-pact.html)

------
malvosenior
I think people are internalizing what is essentially a macro issue down to the
personal level. In reality, individuals are likely to be fine. We're not going
to wake up one day and be instantly vaporized.

The section about people not wanting to have children because of climate
change is really shocking. I find it crazy that people would literally weed
themselves out of the gene pool on the idea that the planet will be
uninhabitable in the very near future.

Humans are resilient, humans solve problems, humans have technology. Maybe
this will push us to go to space sooner than we would have? Maybe we'll create
underground cities? This is an opportunity to advance human technology and
society, not the time to throw in the towel and commit genetic suicide.
Thankfully I think most people wouldn't do that, it's just that doesn't make
for compelling clickbait so those thoughts didn't get included in this
article.

~~~
Analemma_
> We're not going to wake up one day and be instantly vaporized.

Nice strawman. No one ever said we're going to "wake up and be instantly
vaporized". What's actually going to happen is this:

\- Food is going to continuously get more expensive as droughts shorten
growing seasons, desertification and flooding eliminate arable land, the ocean
depopulates, and increased atmospheric CO2 "de-nutrients" the crops that do
grow.

\- We're going to rack up unbelievable debt trying to either migrate people
out of flood zones or try to delay their immersion. I've said before that once
Miami starts flooding enough that people can no longer stick their heads in
the sand and pretend nothing is wrong, Florida real estate owners will
probably demand some ultra-expensive engineering megaproject to try and save
the city on the taxpayers' dime. The same will happen in every other low-lying
coastal region.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12342617](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12342617)
quotes a figure of $180 million just to migrate 600 people in Alaska; now
multiply that by the size of the population in coastal areas and get a glimpse
of the hole we're driving into.

\- Building on that last point, human migration is going to increase
dramatically as people try to escape more affected regions for better-off
ones. The current level of migration, relatively tiny all things considered,
is already causing fatal autoimmune reactions in Europe and North America, and
it's going to increase by orders of magnitude. Not to mention the additional
unrest when the wealthy inevitably retreat to (literal or metaphorical) walled
cities to escape the problem.

\- The above factors of resource scarcity, political unrest, and finger-
pointing are going to cause global wars.

So yes, this will affect all of us on the personal level of having a lower
standard of living in a world of permanent social turmoil. It is not going to
be fine.

> Maybe this will push us to go to space sooner than we would have? Maybe
> we'll create underground cities? This is an opportunity to advance human
> technology and society,

Even disregarding that your own use of the word "maybe" already indicates a
certain amount of hopelessness about the situation, this is a fallacy of "just
because circumstances forced us to develop this technology, that technology is
a Good Thing and represents societal progress". I don't _want_ to live
underground or in space, I want to live on a healthy planet with lots of open
space and diverse environments. At the very best, either of these options
would be like spending your entire life in a climate-controlled office
building. I'd prefer death.

~~~
gus_massa
> We're going to rack up unbelievable debt trying to either migrate people out
> of flood zones or try to delay their immersion. I've said before that once
> Miami starts flooding enough that people can no longer stick their heads in
> the sand and pretend nothing is wrong, Florida real estate owners will
> probably demand some ultra-expensive engineering megaproject to try and save
> the city on the taxpayers' dime.

I agree, but how many years away is that scenario? 100 years? `Wikipedia has a
few predictions in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise#21st_century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise#21st_century)
but most of them predict something between 1ft and 4ft. (Unless there is a
catastrophic event.)

I guess it's not enough to drown Miami, but it may change the coastline.
Anyway most people investment is not thinking about 100 years in the future,
and I never understood why people invest in an area that is heavy in
hurricanes (even in normal climate).

