We can also say bat-guano insane without saying “you’re just 5 beers short of a 6 pack”
Grieving for the environment, without saying ‘climate change’
Agnieszka Wolska, a therapist in Calgary, joined an “Eco-Grief Support Circle†that meets twice a month after losing faith, she says, that nature could rebalance itself. She compares the circles to being at a wake, but it’s also where she finds hope. “Together we have less individual despair. We can just have connection instead of fear or just sadness,†she says.
Academics have begun to attach neologisms to feelings like Ms. Wolska’s: “solastalgia,†coined by an Australian philosopher in 2005, describes a form of distress caused by environmental change, or “ecological grief.†Those feelings of loss surrounding a place are becoming increasingly common, as wilder weather patterns and natural disasters are, many scientists say, becoming more commonplace. (snip)
“I remember after the flood thinking, nothing is the same anymore,†she says over coffee in her farmhouse on a recent day. “All my favorite places are destroyed.â€
That refrain is becoming increasingly common, as weather patterns and natural disasters are becoming more intense. Academics have even begun to attach neologisms to the feelings: “solastalgia,†coined by an Australian philosopher in 2005, describes a form of distress caused by environmental change, or “ecological grief.â€
Call it what you want, it’s still crazy. The climate is always changing, weather will always happen. Did you know that they found elephant bones on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea? That’s because it was mostly dried up during the last glacial period. It couldn’t sustain itself without the Atlantic Ocean, which was too low from being locked in ice. The Sahara was once not a desert (and is trending back that way now).
“There are many people who might deny climate change, for example, but still have really fundamentally strong relationships to their land and to nature, and that’s something we need to tap into,†says Katie Hayes, who is working on her doctorate at the University of Toronto on the psychological and social consequences of climate change, using the 2013 Alberta floods as a case study. “People can have anxiety about what’s happening to them and maybe not see that climate change is a problem that is exacerbating that ecological degradation.â€
I believe the climate has and is changing. The fact that it is mostly from natural causation isn’t making me nuts.
Amy Spark trained as an environmental scientist and co-founded the Calgary-based Refugia Retreats in 2016. They run workshops focused on the intersection between ecological change and mental health. Sometimes those meetings take the form of informational sessions at universities or community centers, where she and her colleague provide an overview of the growing body of research on ecological grief. Sometimes they are spiritual retreats that help participants process their feelings about the loss of cherished spaces – a destroyed landscape or even a single tree.
The anxiety they see is often not about the changes in the present but fears about what is coming or doubts that individual action – say, eschewing plastics – will make a difference. Much distress comes from disorientation – a sense that rhythms of the seasons aren’t reliable, that birds are chirping at unfamiliar times of year, or that wildfire smoke is coming earlier.
Read: Good News: We Can Have Eco-Grief Without Saying ‘Climate Change’ »
Engineers in World War I dug through the earth to build serpentine trenches borne from horrifically clear logic.
Much like before and after the World Economic Forum, it was hard to avoid 
Progressive activists crashed an award ceremony honoring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) at a San Francisco hotel on Wednesday night, demanding she support the introduction of articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.
Reaching 100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization by at least 2050 – consistent with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change goals – by expanding the existing federal Power Marketing Administrations to build new solar, wind, and geothermal energy sources. (
Yesterday the Michigan Court of Appeals handed down a decision in a highly public and very controversial case that gun owners across the United States should applaud. In short, it demonstrates and validates the value of armed self-defense even when you do not pull the trigger and — crucially — have no cause to pull the trigger. It justifies the brandishing of a gun as pre-emptive measure to block the use of unlawful force.
The shift from pork to beef in the world’s most populous country is bad news for the environment. Because pigs require no pasture, and are efficient at converting feed into flesh, pork is among the greenest of meats. Cattle are usually much less efficient, although they can be farmed in different ways. And because cows are ruminants, they belch methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. A study of American farm data in 2014 estimated that, calorie for calorie, beef production requires three times as much animal feed as pork production and produces almost five times as much greenhouse gases. Other estimates suggest it uses two and a half times as much water…
Survivors of the Parkland, Florida, high school massacre on Wednesday released a sweeping gun-control plan that would ban assault-style rifles and take other steps in hopes of halving U.S. firearms deaths and injuries. The proposal included a measure to register more young voters, and the group’s leaders addressed it to 2020 candidates seeking the presidential nomination, urging them to make gun control a top priority.
