Show Notes:
What do Saddam Hussein’s information minister and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board have in common? Hint: it starts with a “d,” ends with “enial,” and isn’t just a river in Egypt. A new and virulent strain of climate denial could be called “doomer shaming.” Instead of acknowledging how logical it is to be distressed about the state of the climate (and the pitiful worldwide political response), delusional boosters of the status quo would rather belittle people who worry about rising temperatures, wildfires, super-storms, and ecosystem breakdown. Jason, Rob, Asher, and Melody consider how to manage climate anxiety and use it in service of caring for planet Earth.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
References:
- Video of Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahhaf, aka Baghdad Bob
- Allysia Finley wrote this Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Climate Change Obsession Is a Real Mental Disorder”
- Nature article dismissed by Finley
- Lancet article dismissed by Finley
- Rebuttal written by PCI Advisor Leslie Davenport and published in the Wall Street Journal
- Rebecca Solnit’s article in The Guardian, “We Can’t Afford to Be Climate Doomers.”
- Survey on climate distress by the Yale Program on Climate Communication
- Gen Dread newsletter on climate distress
- Climate Psychology Alliance
- Good Grief Network
Comments
We changed commenting systems on September 10, 2026 as part of a site-wide functionality and security upgrade. Your past comments have not disappeared, and you can still log in with your old Disqus account credentials if you wish. Contact us with any questions.
this is hardly surprising – the scale of the situation is overwhelming and I don’t see the utility of scaring the pants off everyone since there is nothing that can be done to stop this train running off the rails….
If you listen to the last talk on the great simplification with the author of Bitter harvest , what’s emerging from the darkness of time is the social structures we have today are echo of the very original social structures that formed as we learned to deal with surpluses from agriculture. And the critical insight being these social class structures are intrinsically expansionary… the primary purpose of these classes is survival of the classes !
We have been naïve, or at least I have been in radically underestimating the depth of the forces within our culture that organise us at a fundamental level- they go back 10 ,000 years!
it also brings into contrast the scale of the change to our culture that is required, it is not just how we use technology that needs to change , it’s a radical re-interpretation of our ( humanities) relationship to the universe, Nature, the sacred…whatever you want to call it.
From our cultural lens , I can only speak for myself, but I find it hard even to imagine what a society would look like that didn’t destroy Nature … it might be possible, but I fear getting from here to there , might take losing half or more of the current human population on Earth…
Yea the cultural stuff is profound and overwhelming. Because nobody feels they can “do anything” about the culture they are in, at least in a timely manner and at a scale that makes a difference. Breaking up the cultures that were not as destructive as ours was a kind of extinction level event too, because these cultures can’t just be rebuilt like things potentially can. They are emergent properties of people evolving in a particular place, and being raised from birth in that environment. It has me stumped as well.
True enough. But we can only deal with the cards which are in our hands now. So let’s begin by going on the offensive against the mainstream narrative on “energy transition” which would result in INCREASED emissions in the decade which most matters, being the next ten years.
I can’t possibly be talking over your head here, Jason. The world is gearing up for what I’d call a Heingerg Pulse, were it not for Heinberg himself asking me not to lend so much weight to that naming of the phenomenon. Sigh.
I don’t think our words have ever succeeded in scaring the pants off anyone… so we’re probably wasting our time worrying about that… But there will be millions dying and that will get the attention of many, including current denialists. It’s terrifically sad to think that it will/must come to that.
I know the Pentagon cares mightily about this. I wonder if some government agencies have ideas about how to preserve order under that sort of CONUS-deaths scenario?
Thanks for taking on this important topic and providing great resources for a deeper dive into climate triggered distress. The climate crisis is confusing enough — add in layers of feelings and disinformation and it gets even more overwhelming. I appreciate the insightful looks into various perspectives, research, and meaningful ponderings.
Very disturbing! I am interested in where this information comes from that the closer people live to a dam the surer they are that nothing will happen?
It comes from chapter 14 of Jared Diamond’s Collapse but, unfortunately, he doesn’t provide a reference.
Okay, great, thanks – I’ll have a look!
I think it works out to pontification by people who don’t really understand humans, which is really what is being discussed. (Nobody really understands them.) I’ve heard it said, “Don’t scare the horses,” (i.e., with Climate Breakdown) which is just hearsay and opinion about people’s behavior derived from the 10,000 year Holocene experience. Significantly, I don’t know anyone who is a “Climate Breakdown doomerist” …a phrase which reads like propaganda, BTW. So I suppose it’s important that you call-out this sort of writing.
Sapolsky indicates that something like half of humans have neurobiology that simply cannot function objectively under conditions of ambiguity, and the degree of this is also widely variable among that population. Then, of course, a substantial fraction of humans choose evil behavior (e.g., Stanford Prison Experiment). So speculation about putative large-scale behavioral responses to telling the truth is ultimately just speculation. I counter with, “What will you do when they realize you’ve been lying to them?” (about Climate Breakdown) “Will you try to claim the lies have been for their own good?”
And everyone will realize within just years, based on how rapidly Climate Breakdown is intensifying.
Okay, so it’s been over two weeks since this episode aired. And I’m just now listening, and all I can think to say is …
Gee, guys, when are we going to begin to talk about how so many good climate scientists, like, say, Keven Anderson, have been saying for roughly a decade that we have roughly a decade to begin to seriously decrease GHG emissions — rather than increasing these year in and year out. And yet folks like Richard Heinberg (and quite a few others) are saying, that the dramatic and rapid — ‘fast’ — increase in “renewable energy’ devices and infrastructure being proposed as our foremost response are overwhelmingly likely to result in increased GHG in the decade Anderson, et al, say we need to be … and pretty soon my runonsentence indicates the malformity of my cognition under the influence of “climate anxiety”. Sigh. Breathing…. Breathing.
And my point is no longer one defined by “climate anxiety” but some sort of collective psychopathology in which basic soundness of reasoning, which we try to take for granted as “a thing” has long ago left the barn and raced out into the … well, “the weeds”.
I’m trying to say here that as a culture we’re not yet even BEGINNING to address the near term energy costs of “energy transition” … and our failure to do so seems to me to be a symptom both of a general social and psychological pathology — and let’s add political to that list. If Kevin Anderson is right, and I’m deeply convinced he is, then we can’t afford the “energy costs” of “energy transition” as it has been defined for us by the ruling class and its owned media, etc.
So, guys, now the ball is in your court.