Eco-anxiety, Krystallnacht and the pathologizing of existential risk

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr Nitin Ahuja states "By pathologizing the existential questions raised by global warming rather than the warming itself, health care authorities position themselves as responsive rather than vulnerable to the coming upheaval." The American Psychological Association (APA) formalized “ecoanxiety” as a mental health diagnosis. Ahuja notes that although a report on the subject, by the APA, includes recommendations to “foster optimism” and “support national and international climate–mental health solutions,” it does not mention any specific carbon-reduction efforts, individual or collective, that might forestall climate change in the first place“support national and international climate–mental health solutions.

 

However, to be fair, the APA report (published 2017) has a large section on the health effects of climate change. It is not, in any sense, dismissive of the topic - though the word "activism" is not mentioned.

 

It's perhaps not fair to contemporary psychologists, but reading the opening sentence (above) by Ahuja reminded me of a conversation at a reception for new staff with a recently arrived academic psychologist at the Australian National University in about 2011. I was just starting to supervise a PhD student whose topic was climate change, conflict and public health (my student had trained in psychology among other things). I tried to explain the topic to a potential ally. But she responded not with a diagnosis of "eco-anxiety" but "existential angst". To which I said "if you were Jewish during Krystallnacht and you felt anxious, would you dismiss that as unjustified anxiety?" That must have been too confronting; she immediately moved away. 

 

Donald Trump repeatedly dismissed Greta Thunberg's eco-anxiety. In so doing, he must have felt he had the support of millions of people of his generation - men and women who have benefitted from fossil fuels, but whose future is increasingly precarious. The current rise in the price of food and many other goods in the US and elsewhere is not only to do with the economic recovery from the pandemic, but also climate change (affecting crops) and the rising price of oil. Many of Trump's most loyal supporters are especially vulnerable.

 

Before WWI, Carl Jung had a prophetic vision which is easily interpretable as a premonition of the war - though he dismissed it at the time (described in his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections). Sometimes, people do sense what is coming. Ignoring such warnings risks chaos.

 

President de Klerk made, as one of his final statements, a deep apology to the non-Caucasian people of South Africa. Will coal-loving Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and his fellow travellers one day come to rue their stubborn and unscientific views about climate change and other aspects of limits to growth? It does not seem very likely, but de Klerk's views changed.

Health journals are awakening to the existential risk to well-being, and even to human survival, that untrammelled climate change represents. So must the general population. Eco-anxiety is painful, but justifiable. Its only remedy is emergency action to cool the planet. The first step for that is to move rapidly away from all forms of fossil fuel, and switch to electricity powered by the sun, wind and falling water. We must also reduce animal farming.