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Climate grief group has nine step program

I nearly headlined this:  Climate grief group meets at someone’s house, Grist covers it. That’s pretty much all this program is. No one even counts to nine in this story.

Depressed about climate change? There’s a 9-step program for that.

Imagine Alcoholics Anonymous mixed with an environmental humanities course, and you’ll begin to get a sense of the “good grief” group started by Schmidt. Its goal is to help people cope with what’s been called “climate grief” — anxiety, sadness, depression, and other emotions provoked by awareness of the planet’s march toward a hotter,… future…

 What she found was that feelings of sadness and anxiety, and even literal nightmares, were common. Last year, with the help of her partner, Aimee Reau, Schmidt developed a nine-step program for building resiliency loosely modeled on AA…

But this is big:

About a dozen people attend each session and 50 subscribe to its mailings.

If I get 12 people to my house, and have 12,000 subscribers, do you think Grist will write it up?

Perhaps they have some good results?

Perhaps not:

Schmidt, who now works as an outreach coordinator at the environmental group HEAL Utah, hopes to soon evaluate the pilot, incorporate the program as a nonprofit…

I predict she’ll make much more profit as a nonprofit.

The article tells the story of Keira Bitter, who has it tough. Her family are all Trump voters. She felt alone, even broke down in tears at the first session. So what did the team do — made her feel worse:

The group has been educating her about the consequences of climate change, which has caused her more short-term anxiety,…

One climate grief victim finds it hard to stay in a shop filled with poisonous packaging:

The meetings have been held at the home of Alli Harbertson, who met Schmidt three years ago through a wilderness “vision fast” program. Harbertson works as a caterer, and she recalls once standing in a Costco aisle, surrounded by carts with packaged foods up to people’s shoulders. She retreated to her car for a while before she could face the store again.

Jokes aside about the snowflake shoppers, these people are acting with integrity (if you believe in the climate models and labcoat curses). If the climate scientists are right, and the public believed them, there would be millions of people with these fears and anxieties.

Here’s the bitter Take Home Message for one Climate Griever:

Dick Meyer: “We all live, don’t we, with the notion that if we need it, someone will come save us?” he says. “Well, no one is coming to save you. Certainly not someone from Washington.”

This is the religion of the US President as Messiah — and the discovery of the ugly truth that there are no Gods in Washington. While presidents look like they are giving bread and fishes, it’s an illusion: they have no bread and fishes to give, they take from some and give that to others.

I’d like to suggest a four step program to end Climate Grief:

  1. Keep Calm and read The Skeptics Handbook.
  2. Get a real job.
  3. Go to a Heartland Conference — meet actual skeptics.
  4. Spend ten minutes a day reading skeptic blogs — good for your mental hygiene.

Stop Climate Grief at the source!

But seriously folks — how do we help the Gullible?

 

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