Eco-anxiety

By DR. DANIEL SCHNEE on September 7, 2022.

Recently I read some reportage about the state of the climate, and how my more liberal-minded friends are responding to it. More specifically, they are trying to come to terms with what they see as the inevitable collapse of the world’s ecosystems and the resultant dismal future for their children.

Thus, they have begun gathering to have special group therapy sessions known as “ecological grief circles.”

“Ecogrief” (or eco-anxiety) is a term now being given to the feelings experienced when someone is negatively affected by news of the planet’s woes: deforestation, the political resistance to solar and wind projects, drought, sea level rise and other climate-related issues. And, as author Elin Kelsey states, “having other people validate and echo the legitimate sadness and mourning we feel helps us to build emotional solidarity. Mourning in isolation can spiral into immobilizing despair, whereas shared grief builds communities of support that can help people move toward more energizing emotions of hope and anger. Hope can function as a bridge from mourning to action.”

Kelsey is an author, scholar and leader in what is known as the “evidence-based hope and climate change solutions” movement. She and others have helped give rise to the popularity of these new therapy circles centered on engaging with ecological grief and finding ways to transform it into positive action. But as much as I agree with the activity, and the principles behind it, the renewed positivity generated from such a circle is so often and so easily enervated by the flaws inherent in the climate policies that are supposed to save us. In other words, this renewed desire to save the planet is not supposed to make us worse off, yet it usually does.

For example, a new Inflation Reduction Act was recently passed in the United States that will expand the tax credit for electric vehicles from $7,500 to about $11,000, until the year 2032. This sounds like an excellent deal, until you discover that the vehicle you purchase must, by law, undergo final assembly in North America, and the credit will also factor in the vehicle’s size, its total cost, and the income of the purchaser. Also (before 2024) at least 40 per cent of all critical minerals (like cobalt or lithium) and 50 per cent of the battery components must come from the USA, or one of its free-trade partners, in order to receive full credit. By 2024 no battery components can come from China or other “foreign entities of concern,” and by 2025, no critical materials either. China also happens to make 70 per cent of the world’s battery cells, thus close to 70 per cent of the various types of electric, hydrogen and hybrid cars now being sold in the US will not be eligible for the credit.

Now, California has approved regulation that bans the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035, though Californians are asked to drastically reduce energy consumption during the state’s regular blackouts, etc., making electric vehicle usage practically impossible.

I fully support healing eco-anxiety through communal experience. But when the solutions sought by climate activists are as badly conceived as the American EV tax credit, or the California ban, no amount of ecological grief circles will help. And the rest of us just won’t go along.

Dr. Daniel Schnee is an anthropologist and jazz/rock drummer.

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