Climate change anxiety: do you have it?
Ever feel intensely guilty when you choose to take the car instead of the bus to the grocery store? What about that sense of doom that settles over you when you book the cross-country flight home for a much-needed fall weekend break? The New York Times today has a story on what forward-thinking psychiatrists are calling "climate change delusion": the inescapable sense that you are, in your very existence, causing the doom of the planet. The story, which also cites other cases of culturally influenced delusions (like when patients believe that they're living in a real-life Truman Show), describes a patient who worries about drinking glasses of water because s/he is so concerned about the fate of the world's water supply.
I wish it were scientifically possible to siphon off some of the worry from these poor delusional patients and implant it surgically in the minds of world leaders and corporate honchos. Now, that would be a worthy innovation!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-29-2008 @ 9:58AM
Baron said...
Wow... I really can't say anything else without being really mean!
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