Most
people suffer from a sense of moral failure over environmental matters. The
mismatch between being told to change our light bulbs when the planet seems in
free fall—melting ice caps, polluted water supplies, drought—creates a needling
angst and anxiety. We know that we are in deep trouble, but feel
that there is little we—or anyone—can do individually. Anne Karpf writing about
climate change in the Guardian last year said
“I now recycle everything possible, drive a hybrid car, and turn down the
heating. Yet somewhere in my marrow I know that this is just a vain attempt to
exculpate myself – it wasn’t me, guv.”
To fully acknowledge our complicity in the problem, but
to be unable to act at the scale of the problem creates cognitive dissonance.
And this “environmental melancholia,” results in hopelessness. It is not apathy
we are feeling, but sadness that can be eased only with taking actions, mostly
collective, scaled to the problems we face.
The
moral failure and the inability to act leads to what some now identify as a
moral injury, which is at the root of some post-traumatic stress disorders, or
PTSD.
Link to the whole article >>
Carolyn Raffensperger is the Executive
Director of the Science & Environmental Health
Network, www.sehn.org.
