How Shrinks Can Make Money Exploiting Climate Anxiety
The great diversity of ways to make money in the climate industry is illustrated by, among many other things, the existence of something called the Climate Psychology Certificate program, which I learned about from a letter the program’s leaders wrote the Wall Street Journal responding to a column by Alyssia Finley on how climate change obsession has become a mental disorder
In it, they claim “climate anxiety” is “a real and shared belief that keeps many Americans awake in fear at night.”
Exactly how many Americans can’t actually sleep because they worry climate change will soon make the planet uninhabitable, they did not say.
Doing their bit to pump up the numbers, they link economic losses from floods and fires to ‘climate change’ and conclude that a rapid reduction of greenhouse gases is necessary to ensure a livable future.
The climate psychology program, which is offered through a private university in San Francisco, is delivered online over five weekends and costs participants US$4,000-$6,000.
It is meant to provide “psychological training and skills for therapists, healers, and allied professionals to address the growing mental health impacts of the climate emergency.”
These include “eco-anxiety, eco-grief, and many expressions of climate-invoked dread,” but a perusal of the program description suggests it would do more to provoke climate-related dread, by affirming we should all live in fear of impending climate doom than to reduce it.
If the goal really is to reduce anxiety about climate death and destruction, this could be done by sharing statistics showing that, after adjusting for population growth, deaths from floods, droughts, storms, wildfires, and extreme temperatures have fallen to about one percent of what they were a century ago.
There is no strong evidence that natural disasters are increasing in frequency or severity or, if they are, that climate change is to blame.
And if the fear is that although the Earth is livable now, humanity may soon become extinct due to rapidly rising temperatures, such fear could be put to rest by pointing to the abundant evidence that even under pessimistic climate assumptions, future generations are expected to be much better off than people living today.
Even over long horizons, the expected gains to standards of living delivered by economic growth dwarf the costs of any climate change such growth [allegedly – Ed] produces.
Instead of this fact-based approach to reducing unnecessary anxiety about ‘climate change’, nine of the program’s 11-course descriptions refer to a climate “crisis” or “emergency.”
The program is also infused with politics and ideology having nothing to do with ‘climate change’.
The curriculum overview posits that “the ecological crisis is not only a call to action to ensure the survival of humanity and other life forms on our planet, but also has the potential to move human evolution and consciousness to the next level of social, racial, and economic equality.”
The encouragement of activism and the discussion of how “climate distress” relates to racial oppression and gender bias are part of the curriculum.
One of the program’s courses deals with the complexities of childbearing and parenting during the climate crisis. There is a separate course on how parents should validate and acknowledge their children’s fears of “the climate and biodiversity emergency.”
A third offers an introduction to the power of youths as climate activists. Still, another gives an overview of incorporating expressive art therapies into climate psychology practices.
The curriculum overview says participants will explore “how to deconstruct systemic harm perpetuated in colonized minds and practices.”
In sum, the entire enterprise reads like a parody of how wealthy and privileged left-liberals with five weekends and a stack of cash to spare can learn how to raise the maximum alarm about climate change and, by linking it to a wide range of unrelated social ills, engage in sundry activism.
The silliness of the curriculum and the price tag of up to $6,000 for a handful of Zoom sessions makes a reasonable observer wonder whether the program’s main motivation is a legitimate environmental concern or the desire to both grow and grab a piece of the climate industry revenue pie.
There is nothing wrong with being motivated by money: accountants, dental hygienists, gardeners, investment bankers, school bus drivers, plumbers, cashiers, landlords — just about all of us — are motivated by money.
Why not climate psychologists, too? One difference, however, is that accountants, gardeners, landlords, and the rest provide real benefits to society.
Psychologists affirming and promoting global warming panic may actually subtract from it.
See more here climatechangedispatch
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Kevin Doyle
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Obviously, if you teach little kids that the Earth is going to die because of what selfish humans do every day, then you will reap a harvest of sick, tortured children/adults.
If you tell a lie long enough, and consistently enough; then people will not question it.
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