“The neurological toll of climate change is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid,” writes Clayton Page Aldern, a former neuroscientist and now environmental journalist.
Global warming is not only destroying the planet, it's also causing an “epidemic of brain disease,” argues Alderman, author of the 2024 report. Books The Weight of Nature: How Climate Change Affects Our Brains.
“As rising temperatures and changing weather patterns alter ecosystems, they not only transform the landscape but also create new opportunities for the spread of neurological diseases,” he argues.
One way that climate change could lead to brain disease is through “the spread of zoonotic diseases,” he argues, because as climate change pushes animal populations into new areas, “the potential for pathogen spillover increases.”
RELATED: 'Get out!' Elites outraged as climate protesters disrupt Metropolitan Opera performance
Climate change is “awakening hidden dangers like Naegleria fowleri, the brain-eating amoeba,” Aldern said, which can enter the brain through the nasal passages and cause “devastating meningoencephalitis.”
Alongside these brain disorders is the well-known psychological phenomenon of “eco-anxiety,” particularly among children who believe the alarmists' pessimistic climate rhetoric.
“The existential distress caused by environmental change is an all-too-real phenomenon that leads to anxiety, depression, and even increased suicide rates,” Aldern writes. “For these communities, the scars of climate change are not just physical, but deeply psychological.”
“Ectoanxiety – the chronic fear of environmental destruction – is on the rise, especially among young people,” he added. “It's an intergenerational trauma, a burden borne by people who inherit a world in chaos.”
Ironically, the author seems unaware that a major source of this anxiety is the very fear-mongering he is engaging in.
Climate activists studied people’s emotional responses to climate-related language and purposefully selected the terms that elicited the strongest reactions.
In July 2018, the Berkeley, California City Council Solution Invoking memories of World War II, he declared a global “climate emergency” and called it “the greatest crisis in history.”
next month, salon The magazine announced that it was time to “start panicking” about climate change.
Related: Ah, cricket! Players tackle and remove climate protesters disrupting game
“It's time to panic about global warming” Written salon “Surely, a proper state of panic was long overdue,” said contributor Matthew Roza.
In 2019, Guardian newspaper release The company has updated its official internal style guide with the aim of strengthening its rhetoric on climate change to sound the alarm and motivate readers to take action.
“The terms 'climate emergency, crisis and collapse' are preferred instead of 'climate change' and the term 'global warming' is preferred over 'global warming'.” Guardian He stated.
“For example, the term 'climate change' sounds rather passive and benign, even though scientists are talking about a catastrophe for humanity.” GuardianEditor-in-Chief of .
“Climate scientists and organisations, from the United Nations to the Meteorological Agency, are increasingly shifting their terminology and using stronger language to describe the situation we find ourselves in,” she said.
As activists try to intimidate people into becoming environmental activists, it is no wonder that children are suffering mentally as a result, as they lack the critical thinking skills needed to distinguish fact from hype.
When kids hear that the world is going to end or that human civilization only has 10 more years to survive, they are more likely to believe it.
Caroline Hickman, a psychotherapist at the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA), says parents should learn to use gentler language when talking to their children about global warming.
RELATED: 'I have to go to work!' London climate change protests anger commuters as roads are blocked
Zindulka
“You don't want your child to get depressed and say, 'What's the point of going to college?' or 'What's the point of taking an exam?' I've heard kids say that,” Hickman said.
The Climate Psychology Alliance said some children with environmental anxiety were being given psychiatric medication.
The American Psychological Association defines “ecoanxiety” as “chronic fear of environmental destruction caused by climate change.”
