I actually had a doctor (a GP, not a shrink) tell me that, essentially, being depressed was a perfectly normal and reasonable (if nonconstructive) response to the state of the world.  He was a good doc, too, not some quack.

My personal solution was to change my career, from general mechanical engineering to green building and renewable energy.  I may or may not be making a real difference, but at least I sleep well knowing that I'm trying.  The unfortunate side effect, however, is that in my new career I necessarily learn more about just how screwed we are, in great detail.  So it's something of a wash in the end.

Making environmentally friendly lifestyle changes can also prove therapeutic, she says.

I've often contemplated printing up a bunch of sticky labels, in a graphical style similar to the cheery "New, reformulated with more of X!" labels you see on products occasionally, and sticking them to products on store shelves.  Except my labels would say "Now with 80% less liberal guilt!"

Yes, take a lesson from the ducks: When it is wet, go paddling.

By coincidence -- or perhaps it was subconsciously in connexion with DR's recent snob-o-rama Brooklyn adventure -- , I was thinking of that scene in "Annie Hall," in which the young Alvy Singer, depressed by what he has been told by the cosmologists, is brought to the family doctor.  Of course, the doctor can tell him nothing reassuring, and so his mother shakes him, and cries, "Brooklyn is not expanding!"

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Not so much depression, so much as distraction ;D

_

Depression only comes when you don't see a way out.  (Either technological or political)

Me I see ways out for both.

Generally the way forward is to translate environmental logic into business-bottomline-speak.

It's all about being smarter with the way we spend our resources.  
(Without needing to make the general public any smarter.)

When I was a kid, someone did a demonstration for our Brownie troop using an apple to explain about how much (as in how little) tillable land there is on earth...they start by cutting off about 3/4 of the apple (it's an ocean!) then another 1/8 for everything else (it's polluted, already built up, a desert, etc.) and I couldn't sleep for weeks and weeks afterwards.

I have always been concerned about the environment and have felt that it's necessary to do as much as we can to try to keep the earth livable, but when I worked at the Department of Technology, Business, and the Environment at MIT my mood improved considerably. I saw that there were many things that could be done to improve products and manufacturing practices. It will take political will and consumer pressure to bring these innovations to bear...but it's reassuring to know that there are some solutions and partial solutions out there.

Of course one of the biggest environmental pressures is overpopulation. I don't understand why people don't talk about that more.

Of course one of the biggest environmental pressures is overpopulation. I don't understand why people don't talk about that more.

Mostly, I think, because acknowledging overpopulation as a problem strikes directly at a very powerful, biologically programmed drive to reproduce.  If humans (and other animals) did not have the drive to breed under even (or especially) the most horrible circumstances, we would not have survived this long.  But now that we have achieved technology and effective world dominion, that same impulse may yet kill us, if we don't learn how to manage or control it.

The other, possibly closely related reason, is that for most people, accepting that overpopulation is a problem is tantamount to accepting that coercive population controls are inevitable.  That's simply unacceptable to most people, so they don't go there.

Personally, I find the idea of the government deciding who can breed horrific.  Granted, there are lots of people who are parents who should not be.  But who/how do you make that sort of decision in a remotely just and fair fashion?

Fortunately, I don't think it's ultimately necessary.  Coercive measures are one approach.  The other way to reduce fertility is to urbanize people and introduce television (and other distractions), and a high standard of living generally.  Of course, doing it this way requires prosperity and a technological culture.  If we lose that, coercive measures (and starvation) will be the only options left.  Ugh.

Roz, I got a kick out of your post (but I am sorry you couldn't sleep!) because many of us "environmental educators" go through programs where we are taught the apple lesson to use with impressionable young children- just last year I went through a state certification program that included it.  We also learned an overpopulation one but it used deer populations (called "Oh Deer" and I hated it) as an example for carrying capacity issues, presumably because to talk about human populations is too fraught with sensitive issues.  I wasn't a fan of these types of teaching tools but, then again, I work with adults and communities.  Although last week my father was talking with his assisted living fellow residents about global warming and one little old lady quavered, "You're scaring me!"  But my father just said, "Good!"  

An ounce of practice is worth twenty thousand tons of big talk. -Vivekananda

In my late teens, I read an article saying which I understood to say that the sea would definitely rise 120 ft. in the next 50 years.

The idea of my village in Samoa drowning, in my lifetime, was horrific.

Of course I went back a few days later and reread the article and realized I'd misplaced a decimal or two. But the damage was done, I knew I cared.

Roz, did they at least let you eat the apple after the demo was done?

GreenEngineer, I like your story a lot. I'm trying to get my dad to switch, he is a (smart!) architect/engineer - specializes in hospitals.

I'm finding my anxiety declining more and more as I come closer and closer to accepting that there is nothing I can do.

The "conservatives" I interact with think I'm a commie liberal. The "liberals" I intereact with think I'm a selfish conservative. The solutions I support are viewed as too far left, too far beyond the bounds of traditional values, for conservative to embrace and too far right, too reckless for the neo-Luddites to embrace.

Neither the right nor the left is interested in compromise. Each is ruled by their own dogmatism. And for each it is matter of all or nothing. There is no way for someone like me to participate in finding solutions to our environmental problems in such a confrontational atmosphere... we're attacked from both directions.

So... I'm slowly and surely realizing that I should just take care of myself. Let the left and right beat up on each other. Hopefully, there will still be a significant sampling of Earth's ecosystems remaining after they've pummeled each other to death.

Then, the folks in the middle -- having witnessed and recorded the danger of extreme viewpoints -- can start repairing the damage and building a more-sustainable human society.

It is sad that vast numbers of species will die in the mean time, but I suppose it is a natural event. The human species is like an enormous asteroid striking Earth in slow motion. And, like an asteroid, we will clear Earth for new species to flourish. At least our species will not have tolerated gay marriage or tampered with too many genes during our brief reign. God will smile.

Happy Earth Month!

Forward!

So, can you drive to your eco-therapist appointment?  Maybe instead of driving you should buy a bike and ride that.  Oh wait, that is consumerist. Maybe you could walk to the appointment - but wait, do you have vegan shoes?  How 'bout just pick up the phone, no, wait a minute, your landline is taxed and the money is supporting the war in Iraq.  Maybe you should just email your therapist... after all, Al Gore invented the Internet, so THAT ought to be safe.

But wait, computers use electricity right?

Did I mention that Iran has 3,000 centrifuges busily refining uranium as we speak? Maybe they'll manage to blow us all up before we drown in a sea of our own eco-anxiety.

How 'bout just pick up the phone, no, wait a minute, your landline is taxed and the money is supporting the war in Iraq.

Not any more.  Check out your 2006 tax return; that tax has been rescinded, and there's even an option to get a refund on it.

Anyway, I realize your statement was tongue-in-cheek, but you point directly at a very real problem: It is absolutely impossible to participate in modern society without having bloody hands.  You can minimize your footprint but short of becoming a hermit, there is a limit to what you can do in that direction.

Realizing that is one of the things that drove m to a green career.  I can't entirely stop doing damage, but I reduce my footprint and try to do some good in the meantime.

hi GreenEngineer, i think you're right on why people don't like talking about overpopulation. most people have or want to have kids and still feel ok about it. it's a natural impulse, and it's a huge cultural thing as well. those who choose to go kidless are generally considered weird, at best.

i'm a little curious about this urbanization and television assertion-- although television no doubt does get people to consume lots more junk and waste a lot of time, i'm not convinced it gets them to reproduce less. but i'd like to hear more on where that idea comes from.

the general wisdom last i heard (though i'm no expert) is that it's education foremost, and also socio-economic improvement, particularly of the womenfolk, that help people willingly choose to reproduce less. so that indicates a couple places the government can address overpopulation without being coercive... while some people do seem fundamentally opposed to the government doing anything good for poor people, at least poor people usually aren't opposed to becoming more educated and better off economically. what unfortunately many people are still opposed to, or at least ignorant as to the importance of, is the education and self-sufficiency of women.

oh yeah, and the gov't can also just teach people about birth control and family planning! oh but wait, that's too easy and makes too much sense, so of course the right is opposed to it. darn!

I totally agree with the whole "eco-anxiety" and I think I have had it for the past couple months now. However, It is stupid to go see a therapist.

Whenever I feel the anxiety come on, I go and eat a vegiterian meal. It makes me feel better.

My comment was partly joking, partly serious.  The decline in fertility in developed countries is documented, but the reasons for it are not so clear.  Certainly education is part of it.  Empowerment of women, and access to birth control, is also huge.  But the choice to breed is famously not a decision that many people make rationally.  I suspect that there are other factors at play here, specifically that life in a technological society give provides forms of entertainment besides the ancient standby, and forms of personal fulfillment beyond raising children.  I can't prove that, of course, and didn't mean to imply that I could.

The take-home point is that prosperity is good for population control over the long term (and that appears to be demonstrably the case, though we do not understand the mechanism).

Well me I actually get kinda sick from the "Feel Good" environmentalism.

The stuff which merely gives people a nice warm feeling inside, but doesn't accutually accomplish anything.

Corn Ethanol, for instance, being an overly easy example.

i can personally attest that modern women in developed countries are at least as interested in "the ancient standby" as those of yore. most likely more so, because we don't have to get as pregnant for it. and that's the whole point. but i think what you may be getting at is that people need things to look forward to other than working a crap job and having babies, although i don't think it's a question of distraction and entertainment.

let's get out of the  western setting for just a sec-- many, many women have no choice, economically or culturally, but to become someone's wife at a young age and start making babies. forget access to birth control. also, a lot of people depend on their kids' work (yes, kids work in poor countries! who knew!) to put food on the table just to live.

i wouldn't call empowerment of women just huge--i would call it the prerequisite of population control.

also don't forget that technological society, aka the western world, is consuming the lion's share of the world's energy and resources!

>> Ways to fight it:

Yes that will cure your anxiety and start your blood flowing....

read "Death of Clouds"
omegafour.com

All your worries will be over.

also don't forget that technological society, aka the western world, is consuming the lion's share of the world's energy and resources!

Like I could forget.  Even for a moment.

My point is that simple environmental sustainability isn't enough.  There is no such thing as sustainability, over the long term, without a stable population.  We need to achieve global prosperity, sustainably.

and now, i think i hear my cells buzzing...

Just heard about a movie by Alfonso Cuaron called Children of Men in which women are no longer able to conceive (in the year 2026). It starts with the accidental death of the youngest human being (at age 18). Imagine knowing you are among the last human beings to exist- facing extinction.

Humans are not much worried about going extinct; that's not what drives our need to reproduce. More likely we are thinking about ourselves- about extending our own personal existence by having children. Children are reflections of ourselves- our precious rebirth looking back at us.

In fear of death we reproduce.
In love with life, we consume.
A dance we play with doom.
As time and space runs out.

a liberal in redsville

Are we fearing death, when we approach our orgasm?

Cf. Olympia Dukakis, in Moonstruck.

I do not know the answer, I am just asking.  Anyway, thanks for the poem, Birdboy.

Interesting, that it goes "as time and space runs out," rather than "run out": i.e., as though time and space are a singular phenomenon.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Feels more like accepting death, I'd say. If it's good enough.

A decision to have sex is not (should not be) a decision to have children- certainly we have sex for better reasons than just reproducing ourselves?

If there is no time for motion,
what is space?
If time stops, space shrinks to a point- a singularity.

a liberal in redsville

I asked parents of large families in India and Indonesia, "Why do you have so many children?".  I got the same answer every time across thousands of miles.  "We have children so that some of them survive on the farm to support us when we get old."  Having many children is premeditated and not due to the desire for sex nor entertainment.  If parents had confidence in social services, which do not exist yet, then they would choose to have fewer children.

On population limits, solar energy (without subsidies) can grow endlessly with human populations.  Energy and CO2 are not limiting factors.

My live-in therapist says situational depression is normal and makes me kayak 20 miles for stimulation.   Cassandra says vigorous afternoon exercise raises your core body temperature and relieves sleep disorder.

It can be re-assuring to remember just how much progress could be made toward stabilizing our population, if we just give the poorest among us the security to know they'll get to see their grandchildren before they die. Compared to how expensive some things will be to 'fix', feeding, clothing, housing the poor is surely the most efficient way to make progress toward saving the Earth. Doing this with money collected from 'offsets' in rich countries or carbon taxes would not only stabilize world population, but reduce conflict (war and terrorism, both rather expensive and bad for environments), and reduce the conversion of natural habitats into wastelands. Doing it with new, clean technology would pump up the green economy around the world. Think what that 350 billion could have done, if that Sad Damn Iraqi hadn't been more important?

a liberal in redsville

Never saw the movie. Please forgive me for thinking it looks like orientalist tiki kitsch. Real hurricanes, I'm not too worried. We're pretty much a country full of eagle scouts... know how to predict a storm, throw up a new fale, pickle the taro so theres no famine after all the crops get destroyed, etc. I'd rather the next 120 yrs in Samoa than in, say, Miami.

hmmm. Survivalism, millenarian anxiety about impending apocalypse, why does this remind me of BM07? I wonder, is Grist sending a team to black rock city in Sept for Greening Man? Try out some of these solar planes and battery powered bicycles on the unwashed, not-so-sober masses? Maybe pick up some tips and tricks from the other gear-heads the west coast has to offer?

Why is it so easy to oscillate from one extreme to the other never touching the middle? One moment it's complete scepticism in the face of 'climate conspiracies', the next it's desperation and 'eco-anxiety', the typical obsessive extremes reached through a desire to draw attention to oneself and become self-important. I suppose it is because, in all things, not just politics, the right and the left are closer to each other than they are to the centre.

I think I recognise the feeling - an extrapolation of the small, niggling feeling I get whenever I leave a room, that makes me swivel around and switch the light off. I prefer to call it 'having a conscience'. And I'd rather do a lot of hard work to help actually do something, before I'll pay a penny to a therapist to help cure me of my conscience.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Humanity can't work individually.

It's odd, but I thought of nucbuddy and Scorse when I read sunflower's statement:

"On population limits, solar energy (without subsidies) can grow endlessly with human populations.  Energy and CO2 are not limiting factors."

I'm curious if there's anything to back that up--- last I checked, solar energy was quite diffuse, and whether concentrated by living plants or by thin films or silicon cells or sterling engines, required a heck of a lot of surface area, which is surely limited.  Moreover, as global heating pumps more water vapor into the atmosphere, we can expect a decline in incident solar radiation reaching earthbound collectors.

I presume that "endlessly" is hyperbole (is it?) and that sunflower is not actually asserting that there is no real limit on human populace ....

Lots of smart people have taken a crack at estimating a sustainable (i.e., solar powered) carrying capacity, and the estimates seem to top out at about 2 billion.  I've certainly not heard anyone suggest that we can keep growing without mining past solar energy stores (a/k/a fossil fuels).

I think there are some responses to eco-anxiety that are helpful, but many are simply denial.  (I note that, in this discussion, as in others, we blame the anxiety on the awareness of the problem created by our profound commitment to infinite growth economics, rather than on that root cause of our problem.)

"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."

There are no silver bullets, not yet anyway, just wedge solutions.  Nonetheless, there is enough solar energy for everybody, now and into the future.  Other than hydro and wind, all of our energy comes from thermal sources.  (Forget flat plate pv for this for now, that tech is another story for another time.)

One square meter, 1 m2, of collected sunlight is worth about one barrel of oil per year in sunny climates, about half that in cloudy climates.  Solar energy can be used for heat, steam, ice, power, desalination, food processing, ... at similar conversion efficiencies of oil, gas, and coal.  It would not take much land to supply all of humanity with the energy needed for business as usual.  With efficiency, the transition to a solar economy can happen much quicker with trillions of dollars saved.  

The land costs are 5% to 10% of solar hardware costs.  Very high volumes of solar hardware supply will be required for a timely global energy transition.  The requirements are much too large for effective subsidies and must be sustained by raw market economics.

<img width="527" src="http://www.harbornet.com/sunflower/pvethanol.gif" class="blog" height="483">

The take-home point is that prosperity is good for population control over the long term (and that appears to be demonstrably the case, though we do not understand the mechanism).

My point is that simple environmental sustainability isn't enough.  There is no such thing as sustainability, over the long term, without a stable population.  We need to achieve global prosperity, sustainably.

KEYWORD -- sustainably!!  Prosperity as it is right now is NOT sustainable -- I'm so tired of seeing the developing world getting the burden of blame.  As bkracer and GreenEngineer noted, it IS the prosperous developed countries (as well as the properous in developing countries) who consume more resources.  I have a really hard time with Western environmentalists who are vegan, bicyclists, organic gardeners -- with kids! How on earth does this add up?  I mean, asking one average American child consumes the resources that could support 60 average Indian children. Shouldn't population education and better family planning, then, be focused on the RICH?  I thought it was pretty simple. Apple, Brooklyn, Maddox and all the rest of them, as well as the average well-fed suburban child being driven to school in the family SUV, worry me a lot more than some peasant with 8 kids trying to survive off the land.

Support VHEMT!

"Now the earth is going to collapse!"That's what we call eco-anxiety...it's just all of us realize how crucial the situation is. But who is to blame? We are to blame cause we only think when it's too late.

This thread is getting a bit loosey-goosey, but that is OK, that is the best sort of thread, IMHO.

In particular, Shimona, Birdboy and that great old prophet-pal Sunflower, with Cassandra at his side, have said some very impressive things.

Not that I agree with everything, and not even that I understand everything.  E.g., I got lost on "Support VHEMT."

But the heart that is there, as I perceive it, I love.  So, thank you very much.

Birdboy, I entirely agree with your thumbnail comment on the purpose of sexuality, which pretty much turns Catholic sexual ethics, for example, on its head.  I was certainly not endorsing the idea that we have mortality and procreation in mind when we have sex.  But your poem reminded me of that notion.  And as I wrote, the wonderful Brooklyn/Manhattan/Toronto movie "Moonstruck" touches on the subject.

After all, connecting love and death is pretty much a cliche', no?  A truism?  A truth?

Mimi, I would not expect that that ancient classic movie "The Hurricane" contains much of value, regarding the anthropology of Pacific islands, or even regarding their climatic conditions.  I was only saying that so far as the cinematic arts go, the storm sequence is very impressive.

Tico89, your take on "conscience" is lovely.  I do not think it punctures Kate's original post at all; it seems to be expressing something that she originally had in mind.

JMG, Jesus-Mary-Giuseppe, you are invaluable.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

"People have kids for selfish reasons."

News flash? Anyone with a minimal understanding of biology is aware of this. How can anyone criticize something as natural and essential to survival of a species as having children? I'm afraid raising this as an issue demanding a solution seems rather pointless.

"Not a day goes by that I don't feel ashamed to be a part of the human race."

Why? Do you think beavers feel shame when they flood acres of land, changing the ecology of an area, all for their own selfish needs?

"I also believe that if humans were to vanish from the planet tomorrow, there would not be an animal or plant (what's left of them) that would not breathe a sigh of relief."

The chimps that have learned to hunt bush monkeys with crude spears would be especially delighted, as they would have a new niche to fill. Then, someday, they could feel ashamed about being chimps.

"The vast majority of Americans know exactly what they're doing to the planet and simply don't care."

I think they do care, but do not know how to cope. They are overwhelmed. They are not motivated to conserve when they see others still behaving badly. Someone has to set an example. But suggesting that voluntary extinction of the human species is a viable solution is not going to help. People will just roll their eyes and say, "There goes another nutty environmentalist."

"I think we all need to get outside ourselves and empathize with all the innocent non-human animals and others on this planet who are truly taking the brunt of our actions and choices."

I agree with this. But why do we have to hate the human species? Why do we have to be ashamed to be a part of it? Why aren't we just as important and worthy of preservation as any other species. This is another example of the extreme options generally presented to people. On one side there is the self-hating environmentalist constantly criticizing humans for being humans. On the other side is the happy-go-lucky right-wing wacko who insists humans have no effect on the planet, animals have no feelings, and everything will be okay.

How about a return to realistic solutions?

Forward!

vhemt is a good exampl of a self-limiting philosophical system

everyone join, follow their lead

i'll be right behind you, just going to hang out for a while

really, i'll be right with you

you go ahead and volunteer

say, that is a nice bit of land you have there

really, i'll be right behind you

Thank you, EStark, for that reference, and your comment.

The VHEMT site is nicely written, even entertaining.

But I cannot be sure that the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is a real movement.  If it is, then the only truly effective participants in it are sexually active women, who would prevent themselves from becoming pregnant, or remaining pregnant.

Still, even for those of us who are not sexually active women, there is a lot there of great interest.  For example, I was pleasantly surprised by the Pagan/Wiccan statement that was quoted.

On beavers, etc.: I think it is fair to say that all non-human animals are without conscience, and conduct themselves strictly for self-serving ends, and those ends can involve the harm or death of other animals.  But I do not know that they are responsible for coordinating mass deaths, as human beings regularly do when they fish with nets, or with explosives, or with long lines with multiple hooks, and in some other forms of hunting, such as those horrendous "buffalo jumps" that certain Native American groups used to engineer, once upon a time.

Because of their amazingly effective methods of reproduction, many insects, and other arthropods, can sometimes relatively quickly devastate large populations of other organisms.  On some level, I suppose, it may be fair to consider that activity "evil" -- e.g., infestations affecting entire forests, and the inescapable swarms of biting insects in Arctic regions.  But the individual arthropods can surely not deserve blame.

Are beavers evilly destructive?  The impression that I have is that when they alter a hydrological system and create a wetlands environment, they are actually responsible for a much more diverse fauna and flora.  And conversely, when European fur-trappers eliminated beavers from large parts of their ranges, so that rivers and streams returned to a more fast-draining state, this had the effect of impoverishing ecosystems.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!