Ask HN: Does reading about climate change give you anxiety or depression?

Yes. IDK how to manage it, so I ignore it as much as possible. But I do so knowing that it contributes to a growing low level subconscious anxiety that I don’t know what to do with.

At root I believe that we are all slowly killing ourselves and that likely in my lifetime we will reach a tipping point. Humans may continue for another 5-6 generations but then we will become extinct too. Culture as we know it will die, and all of the achievements of human mind and all of the natural splendor of our world will disappear into the cold void of space.

Everything seems futile. Our society is so geared towards consumption and pollution, how can we possibly reverse course? Life is still beautiful, and worth living, and worth fighting for, but all signs point to us being screwed.

How do you cope?

No, I actually smile and shake my head. I apply a rule: "always remain sceptical and follow the money". You apply that rule to these "climate change alarmist news", I guarantee, you'll also be smiling and shaking your head.

No, no at all. I believe that our planet are able to recover on any situation, including climate change.However, to keep environment clean and sustainable is my priority.The question is either I am able to live for today or tomorrow, I am not sure about that.

Dread that so many people are believing propaganda over science. Dread that there is so much resistance to simply making our world livable.

No. I have zero depression or anxiety about climate change.

I have enough micro-environmental stresses to keep me perpetually at a med/high level of depression at all times.

When I'm exceptionally depressed (maybe 2 times per week), I actively look forward to my own death and couldn't care less about the environment.

I know that sounds heartless, but it's the truth. Miserable people often don't care about their own life let alone the life of 8 billion unknown people. A strategy to improve the general public's opinion on climate change might be to spike the water supply with Prozac.

At least you can talk about it without being expelled by webhosts, communities, payment processors, etc You even get invited to cool events with world leaders. Not a bad gig.

Imagine being one of those preoccupied with the collapse of white population worldwide and western civilization in general. Now, those guys really have a reason to be depressed, and if they look for mental health's help, most therapists would probably refer them to the police. If they talk about it, banks will ban them and so will web hosts and such stuff. They're marked and targeted, with harassment and violence, by the police and leftists thugs.

As long as you have a big community to support you, you can't complain that much, even if the world is gonna collapse. Because maybe humanity kinda deserves it.

You need to develop a healthy dose of apathy. You're a cog in a machine and there are many things beyond your individual control from climate changes work projects heading for a cliff to your sports team winning the wooden spoon. The best you can probably do is try your best and learn to laugh at the situation.

Just don't get too apathetic, there are things you can do to help like voting and creating less waste.

Since this is HN, I am going to prefix this with the disclaimer that this is not a denial of climate change. Here goes:

Bloomberg terminal is $24K/yr. I use that as a baseline for the market value of somewhat accurate/timely information--they don't give it away! Contrast with newspapers, which are sold primarily at cost of distribution, "5 free article" news websites which are more PR-organ than journalism, and cable news--which is virtually given away to the point of ubiquity (restaurants, salons, dr's offices, etc).

This whole "you are the product" biz is nothing new. Media serves its advertisers. They have to keep us exposed to the ads, and crises are effective at that--keeping us all under a sort of siege mentality--where we check compulsively as if life and limb were at stake. Actual knowledge or constructive insight will never be offered. That would diminish the effect. Instead, they offer a round-table of whores and buffoons (all billed as world-class experts, of course) to crank the despair up to 11.

To go to the shrink and take the pills is to succumb to both stages of the scam. Before going there, first try disengaging from media. Grab a book off archive.org instead--preferably, an old one.

Yes, already was pretty anxiety-ridden about the non-action I've seen from the biggest economy in the world, and after reading the paper Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy[0] by Jem Bendell, can say I'm much less thrilled about our chances, especially if the denial is still there as "the science has always been wrong in predicting the end, because we are still here..."

Sounds to me like some sort of hot hand fallacy with the chips being billions of lives. Problem is coming too fast, with too much at stake, for the powers that be to still act as if we have all the time in the world to do something about it. But people still believing there is a way to reverse course may keep this twisted musical chairs we are playing, going for a little bit longer.

Will there be humans still around? Maybe, chances are there will be descendants of ones who could and did hoard material, but everyone else? Not so sure on that front.

But hey, all the fascination with total societal collapse coming via zombies. super villains, or the like may have some weirdos actually pining for that. Lets see what happens when the death cults start popping up.

[0] http://lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf

Yes, the wallet in my back pocket throbs with Existential Dread every time I read an article justifying why I'm forced to subsidise wealthy people's expensive, unreliable power for their multiple fancy homes and the SUV's that shuttle them back and forth.

nope and its only partially because im a selfish git, the other part is simply that i have more immediate and pressing concerns to deal with in my world, if someone doesnt do something about climate change then sure people will suffer in years to come but if i dont keep my wages coming in ill suffer a lot sooner

be attacked every minute by food ads, places and people eating while walk on the street or watching TV/scroll instagram gives me anxiety. And also is terrible for climate change.

That is the only topic my kid, who recently went to high-school brought up so far. She said her teacher talks endlessly about it, how everything is bad. I think we need to take a step back and think as to what it really means, and to whom. If we're talking about global scale, then sure, it'll be bad, but if we're freaking out our kids, you know the kids in the first world, well how bad is it going to be? We need to stop freaking the kids out and telling them they are doomed.

No, and there's absolutely no need to be. It's perfectly fine to be concerned about climate change, but if you're experiencing anxiety or depression, it's best to seek help and overcome that. It's still a vast and complex discussion of what to be done, but as soon as you subject yourself to the climate hysteria (with the latest outlandish and untrue(https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/no-climate...) claim being that the world will end in 12 years), you're being manipulated by politicians, media outlets, and other charlatans for fun and profit.

I might live through the biggest upheaval in mankind's history since the invention of agriculture. We're in for some interesting times!

No, the earth doesn't need our "saving", that's a very self-righteous view to hold imo. What we are attempting is really to save our own species.

I don't know why, I've never really shared the concerns that our species must go on, just like how some people believe if they don't have children and their bloodline ends there, it's a terrible thing, but for me if that's the case then that's the case.

I honestly feel like maybe it's causing more harm to put people in anxiety and depression, and to tell our kids that we're all gonna die when they're just getting to know the world.

But that's just me /shrug

Nope, not in the slightest. I've got more pressing concerns.

I'm pretty much desensitized and take with a grain of salt almost anything the news pushes; after a while, you see that the same stories get trotted out year after year, almost like clockwork, on a wide array of topics, and it's the same thing, with nothing ever actually changing. The stories wear different clothing, but it's always the same; the end is nigh, repent o ye sinner, believe and ye shall be saved, and reborn again pure. If I had a fit about everything that the newspaper or the TV anchors try to work up a dudgeon about, I'd be a constant nervous shaking wreck. So I just go about my business and ignore the panic of the day.

If you can't do anything about something, why worry? If you can, then do, and why worry?