Both the major parties in Australia support new gas projects

Climate grief expected to be widespread soon but it's still not openly acknowledged (excerpt): ABC

"Feeling miserable, anxious, helpless and just generally terrible because the world is becoming less habitable? You're not alone.

"The good news is there are strategies that may help you cope. The bad news is the pandemic we're now facing may test your passion and enthusiasm for climate action.

Kurtis Baute recently sought out

 professional help to cope with

 his despair about climate change.

(Supplied: Kurtis Baute)

For the past 18 months, Canadian scientist Kurtis Baute says he has been dealing with a lot of 'climate grief'.

"Basically I can't stop thinking about the fact that millions of people, real people, are dying or will die because of something that is completely unavoidable," he recently announced on his YouTube channel. 

"We can stop using fossil fuels but so far we've completely failed to do so...it feels completely out of control and it's depressing."

Climate grief — or eco anxiety/despair — is a strong psychological response to the current and future loss of habitats, species and ecosystems.

It's recognised by the Australian Psychological Society (APS) and sufferers may feel emotions like fear, anger, guilt, shame, grief, loss and helplessness.

It can be related to the direct impacts of climate change, such as drought or bushfire. But it can also take the form of a sense of doom or even existential crisis about our warming world.

In some ways it's a lot like the grief we experience when someone dies.

The health industry predicts it will be common place in the next 10 years.

Becoming more environmentally engaged

 

The danger of unvalidated grief

Climate grief is often categorised as a form of disenfranchised grief which means it isn't always publicly or openly acknowledged.

"There's no ritual around loss of environment," says Tristan Snell, a counselling psychologist and researcher in environmental psychology at Deakin University.

"When you lose someone, there's a funeral and all sorts of ways people connect and this helps process that loss. That's just not the case for loss of environment." 

People experiencing disenfranchised grief can feel unsupported or

The thought of climate catastrophe can be overwhelming

ashamed, and consequently can be very reluctant to talk with friends, family or a professional.

"People may feel this isn't something someone else can help with," says Dr Snell.

This can then snowball into major physical and mental health problems.

Some will feel this more than others

Researchers, including Dr Snell, are currently trying to gauge the mental health impacts of climate change and recent climate-related events on Australians with this survey which you can get involved in. 

However, the latest research says that if you're between 15 and 24-years-old you are at higher risk of feeling climate grief, with almost half of young Victorians feel extremely frustrated, fearful, sad and outraged about climate change.

Climate change is causing grief

"How to cope

Clinical psychologists are developing strategies to help people work through climate grief, but research is still quite limited.

However you may find the follow tactics help with feelings of emotional distress:

• Gather trusted and authoritative information on the topic to ensure your knowledge on climate change is correct
 
• Become more environmentally engaged by getting involved in land care or tree planting for example — taking action to better the planet is thought to relieve some anticipatory grief 
 
• Spend time in nature to remind yourself it's a source of strength

• Talk with like-minded family or friends and if needed, seek professional help"

Read the complete ABC article 

Related:  We need action to prevent further catastophic fires and we need to be prepared for wildfires


#cambio-climatico, #climateaction, #climate crisis, #climateemergency, #criminales-climáticos-de-la-cárcel, #jailclimatecriminals, #人类灭绝, #气候变化, fossil fuel industry, 

Lessons From the Frontlines of Global Warming (excerpt): New Republic

"What interviews with flood, wildfire, and drought survivors can teach us about how to live amid the threat of climate change

 

Extreme heat kills

Ronnie Scott lost his wife when she tried to to rescue their dog and cat from floodwaters in West Virginia in 2016. Carole Duncan almost lost her 83-year-old father during Australia’s massive 2019 bushfires, the firefighters finding him just in time. 

KerryAnn Laufer returned home days after the 2019 Kincade Fire in California to find only her fireplace still standing, while Dave Mackey saw nearly every house in his neighborhood on Grand Bahama island washed away, pummeled by raging waters and 200-mile-per-hour winds from Hurricane Dorian.

Storms, wildfires, and other such disasters are getting more common and intense as climate change accelerates. Scott, Duncan, Laufer, and Mackey, who survived these extreme weather events, are among the lucky ones. But each of them found themselves changed by the experience.


What would you do if your house burned down or your neighborhood washed away in a flood? How would you respond if a cataclysmic weather event killed someone you love or forced you to abandon, perhaps forever, the place you call home? And how would it change the way you think about the world?


These questions are at the heart of a new “Voices from the Future”

Green new deal is cheap actually

interview series a small group of journalist, researchers, and I have developed at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. We have collected the stories and insights of nearly three dozen survivors on five continents, eight of which will be published in these pages over the next few weeks."

Original story 

Steven Beschloss is a professor of practice at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and directs the Narrative Storytelling Initiative at Arizona State University. He has written for The New Yorker and The Washington Post, among other publications.

 

#California, #firestorms, #wildfire, Australia, cyclones, floods, Green New Deal, hurricanes, 


 

Greenpeace Gives Democratic Platform C+ on Climate, Calling for 'Action at the Scale That Science and Justice Demand':

Climate Criminals

"We know the Republicans have no plan," says the advocacy group. "But that doesn't mean the Democrats can take their feet off the gas."

Greenpeace USA announced Wednesday that the platform which Democrats are set to adopt this week earns only a C+ rating based on the scorecard process the group previously used to rank the climate policies of what was once a large field of the party's 2020 presidential primary candidates.

That C+ (52.5 points out of 100) is notably lower than the B+ (75.5/100) that Greenpeace gave to former Vice President Joe Biden, whom Democrats formally nominated as the party's candidate Tuesday night, or the B+ (77/100) the group gave to his former competitor and current running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).

Although the soon-to-be-finalized 2020 Democratic platform received "decent marks for advancing renewable energy and environmental justice," Greenpeace determined that there are "critical policy gaps in addressing the power of the fossil fuel industry" and it makes "no mention of the Green New Deal."

As Fires Surge in Brazilian Amazon, Bolsonaro Strategy to Battle Deforestation Blasted as 'PR Stunt': Common Dreams

"Instead of combating criminal behavior and protecting Indigenous forest guardians already hit hard by Covid-19, this government continues to reduce environmental protection."

Greenpeace flew over Amazonas and Rondônia on August 16, 2020 states to verify the effectiveness of a fire ban imposed by the Brazilian government last month. (Photo: Christian Braga/Greenpeace)

A month after Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro declared a 120-day ban on setting fires in the Amazon rainforest and three months after he deployed military troops to combat deforestation, Greenpeace on Tuesday called out the far-right leader for his ineffective strategies and attacks on environmental protections.

"Bolsonaro's administration has continued to systematically dismantle environmental protection and has undermined the work of environmental law enforcement agencies," Cristiane Mazzetti, an Amazon campaigner for Greenpeace Brazil, said in a statement. "Bolsonaro's supposed fire ban has already been undermined by Bolsonaro himself. Sending troops to the Amazon is just a PR stunt and a waste of resources."

Rare 'fire tornado' rips through California as heat wave descends on the US: CNN

Aug 17, 2020

2020 has reached into its bag of tricks again and tossed out another surprise - this time in the form of a swirling fire.

Or as meteorologists call it, a "firenado" - short for fire tornado.

The rare and fiery tornado was spotted Saturday near a fire in California.

A huge forest fire that prompted evacuations north of Los Angeles flared up around noon Saturday, August 15, sending up a cloud of smoke as it headed toward thick, dry brush in the Angeles National Forest. (AP)

The National Weather Service Office issued a tornado warning for a pyrocumulonimbus cloud that formed by the Loyalton Fire, saying it was "capable of producing a fire-induced tornado and outflow winds in excess of 97km/h," CNN meteorologist Haley Brink said.

A pyrocumulonimbus cloud forms above intense rising heat, typically from a fire or volcano.

Fire tornadoes are created when the rising heat from a fire pulls in smoke, fire and dirt, creating a rotation vortex above the blaze, Ms Brink said.

Fire tornadoes can be massive and deadly.

#wildfire, #bushfires

When the National Weather Service surveyed the damage on that firenado, it determined it was equivalent to an EF-3 tornado with winds in excess of 230km/h.

Officials in California, Oregon and Colorado are battling a series of wildfires that have collectively torched more than 40,000 hectares - and things could get worse with intense heat descending on much of the US.

The Loyalton Fire has burned over 8000 hectares and was five per cent contained by early Sunday.

Related: We need action to prevent further catastophic fires and we need to be prepared for wildfires

#wildfire, #bushfires, #California, #heatwaves, #drought, #climatechange, #climateaction, #cambio-climatico, #jailclimatecriminals,  

See original 9 story

Sea level rise is so much more than melting ice: Verge Science video

While researching climate change, we heard something confusing: the sea level in New York City is rising about one and a half times faster than the global average. We couldn’t figure out what that meant. Isn’t the sea level...flat? So we called up an expert, Dr. Andrea Dutton, and went down the rabbit hole. And, we did our best to visualize her truly bizarre answers with animations, dioramas, and a lot of melting ice.

Subscribe: http://bit.ly/2FqJZMl

Related:Greenland's melting ice sheet has passed the point of no return, scientists say (excerpt): USA Today


sea level rise, #searise, #climatechange, #cambio-climatico, #icemelting, #jailclimatecriminals,