'Climate grief': The growing emotional toll of climate change | Hacker News Reader

'Climate grief': The growing emotional toll of climate change

nbcnews.com

32 pointsuptown34 comments

This article is likely to get heavily down-weighted on HN, so before that happens, I guess it's that time again for a what-can-you-do-about-it post :)

To start, here's my favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"

==So what can you do about it?==

I work in cleantech, and you should, too! Solar and wind are economical, so now the biggest issue is scaling them up. That means tons and tons of problem solving, which means great tech and engineering jobs!

If you think about it, the switch to renewables means we need to deal with situations where the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, yet still keep the lights on. That means you have to build in a ton of storage and load control, which means good communication and analysis, which means software! Something like half of the impact of the energy transition will be done through software optimizing the deployment and operation of clean energy assets.

Anyway, please check out my previous comments on recommendations when looking for climate impact work[1].

Also, working in cleantech can significantly reduce the feelings described in this article. Think of it like exercise. By working at it, your body naturally replaces anxiety with optimism and motivation. Physically doing something to fight your anxiety will make you feel better.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127154

Is there much in the way of software development and data engineering? I clicked on some of your links but the focus was on engineering jobs involved with building the physical infrastructure, which sort-of matches my expectations. But it also means theres not much I can reasonably do to contribute.

Absolutely! Most distributed battery storage (Stem, Advanced Microgrid, etc.) and building energy management companies (Carbon Lighthouse, Siemens, etc.) have software divisions that focus on data analysis tools for their customers (think energy dashboards and reports). Also, most grid operators (CAISO, etc.), utilities (PG&E, etc.), and utility vendors (AutoGrid, etc.) have data analysis divisions that focus on figuring out how we can keep the grid running while ramping up renewables. Finally, regulators (Dept of Energy, public utility commissions, city managers, etc.) are in desperate need of data science talent to help them understand all this new energy advancements that are going on (often at policy hearings utilities are saying one technical thing, distributed energy companies are saying another technical thing, and the panel of regulators have no idea what the technical implications of all this back-and-forth is).

Hope that helps! Maybe you can try searching typical software job boards (Indeed, etc.) for your language of choice + keywords (clean energy, solar, renewables, smart grid, climate change, etc.).

> “The emotional reaction of my kids was severe,” she told NBC News. “There was a lot of crying. They told me, 'We know what’s coming, and it’s going to be really rough.’ “

It depends how she presented the report to her children. Did she just let them watch the news or read it to them. Children pick up the emotional state and anxiety of their parents, and they don't necessarily know how to deal with it.

If her children are having panic attacks over it, not sure global warming is to blame as much as she is. If there wasn't this issue chances are her children would be having panic attacks over globalization, open air slave markets in Libya, how police treat minorities, famine, etc.

I agree.

I'm not saying you down play the threat, but you have to realize that children are not adults. Almost everything is a new experience to them. And they do not have the tools in order to deal with the emotions.

I was pretty annoyed when my partner's 2 kids came home from school in a complete tizzy over the presidential election. I'm not sure if it was from their friends or their teachers. But they were practically crying, thinking everything was going to fall apart.(It wasn't from either of us)

You have to be very careful about how and what you tell to kids. Especially since something like the presidential election or climate change just isn't something they can truly have an affect on yet.

I remember being completely devastated when I learned that the sun was going to explode in 5 billion years time.

That's funny. That still makes me sad to this day. But I was pretty broken up over it too. Somehow the fact that I will have been long dead did not matter.

In decline and fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbons focuses a lot on the people’s climate fears. The people believed that there was nothing that could be done and that they deserved nature’s wrath.

In the 1600s, Lisbon was leveled by an earthquake. Some thought that God was punishing them others saw it as an opportunity to rebuild and grow stronger. Today, Lisbon is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

I pray for people to end the fear and believe in a bigger future. Happy new year.

I don't think anyone commenting on this post who is downplaying the reaction has really grappled with what we're up against here.

I may work as a software engineer, but my degree is in physics. I've read the reports, as well as a lot of other researchers comments on climate. We're in real trouble. Frankly, panic attacks are an entirely justified and justifiable reaction, if not the most productive.

The IPCC, which has consistently been proven to have been overly optimistic about climate change, is sounding a drastic alarm. They're saying we need to cut carbon by 45% in the next decade across the board or face "catastrophic" consequences. As if nearly semi-annual thousand year hurricane events and the west coast in flames weren't already catastrophic consequences.

Reducing carbon emissions by 45% means making half the cars on the road electric or getting them off the road entirely in 10 years. It means converting half of our power system to solar, wind, nuclear, or hydro in 10 years. It means forcing carbon producing industry to cut emissions by half in ten years, and getting half the people who use home heating oil to use alternatives in the next ten years. And if we fall short in one area, we need to make it up in another. And this needs to happen globally.

To be brutally honest, we're _not_ going to hit that target. Period. It's just not going to happen. The level and speed of change that needs to happen is effectively out of reach. We've, realistically, already locked in catastrophic consequences.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Every tiny bit of progress we make helps reduce the consequences we face and could potentially save lives. I'm, most likely, going to be running for city council in my city on a climate response platform that involves building out the transit, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure -- disincentivizing driving in the process -- and finding ways to get solar panels on people's roofs that don't require the local power company's consent. Who knows whether I'll win or not, but at least I can force the conversation.

You can do the same. It doesn't matter how small or insignificant your town may seem, every little bit helps. A lot of people think this is going to take national action, and they're not wrong, but it's also going to take local action. And we can't afford to wait for the national action.

We need to build infrastructure that allows people to forgo driving. We need to build dense housing that makes it easy for people to live with in walking or biking distance of their work and the amenities they need. We need to get people using solar and wind to power their homes. We can do these things at the local level. In fact, most of things things _have_ to happen at the local level. Even if we end up with a federal green new deal program, we're going to have to enact these things locally.

Again, we're not going to hit the target and we're going to be facing catastrophic consequences. If you're in a coastal region, think about getting out now. If you're in southern Florida -- seriously, get out now. Find a new community and start putting down roots. The IPCC thinks we're not going to have to worry about Florida until sometime around 2080 or 2100, but the IPCC has consistently been wrong. James Hansen's team's finding, which suggests we could lose most of Florida as early as 2050 keeps getting replicated.

Luckily, for the communities not at risk of annihilation the things they need to do to prevent climate change are also the best ways to prepare for the consequences: build lots of dense, walkable housing so that we can absorb the migrations with out emitting carbon in transportation. Build large resilient local food systems. Get people using renewables.

We pretty much know what we have to do -- we have to totally transform our society -- and we know how we have to do it. The issue is over coming the inertia and building the political will to do it.

So you can totally be forgiven for having panic attacks (and for the love of all that is holy, don't you dare make fun of people who are experiencing them -- those people are accurately grappling with reality while you're in denial), but do your best to get through them and then just get to work. We know what we have to do. Lets do our best to get it done.

Good, thoughtful post. I think what you've perhaps failed to run across in your AGW/CC readings is that any coming temperature rise is both unknown in magnitude within a fairly wide range, and modulated by natural variability.

I guess the two points I'd make about what you've written are:

- A "green new deal" (or any other US action) isn't going to do a thing to address the major sources of CO2 generation going forward - China, India, and other rising third world powers. China and India both have large commitments to coal power.

- There should be more investment in energy research. Next generation nuclear should be given priority. Current renewable solutions are too expensive over time (20-25 year livespan, versus 40-60 years for gas/nuclear), and inherently unreliable. Nuclear can produce electricity with retail prices in the neighborhood of five cents per KWH.

The only real solution in the long term is to develop clean technologies that are more cost effective than dirty technologies. The LED light bulb is a good example of how that can work...

Yeah, we don't know exactly what's going to hit us. But we know the IPCC has consistently undershot the mark. We know that many well respected scientists have identified feedback loops not accounted for in the IPCC's calculations that could make things much, Much worse than the IPCC is laying out. And we know the IPCC is already calling for a World War II level mobilization to completely retool our society.

Hansen's team identified a feedback loop that could see us facing 10 feet of sea level rise or more by as early as 2050. And his finding has been replicated several times. Other teams have identified feedback loops (different ones from those Hansen identified) that could see us hitting 1.5C as early as 2030, instead of in 2040 as the IPCC predicts. Many climate scientists think we're headed for between 4 C and 6 C of warming by 2100, instead of the 2 C - 3 C that the IPCC is predicting.

When we get up into the 4 C to 6 C range, we start to edge into run away feedback loops trigged by the release of sequestered methane from the permafrost that could see us catapulted into a rerun of the Permian extinction.

All of which is to say, we can't afford to be complacent about this anymore. We have to move and we have to move _now_.

With respect to China and India, yeah, they are going to be major sources of CO2. But until the US moves they have little incentive to move on fixing their issues. If the US handles its carbon, then we can reasonably put pressure on them to do the same. Maybe we can offer funding to help. But even best case for national funding is two years for now. And the form a "green new deal" would likely take is funding to help municipalities make the local infrastructure and power grid changes. Well, there's no reason the municipalities have to wait for that funding. They can and should start making the changes now. Every reduction in carbon emissions helps.

Nuclear does need to be part of the mix, but we don't have time to be picky. Nor do we have time to wait for new innovations. We're in the eleventh hour. We need to reduce carbon emissions by hook or by crook anyway we can. It doesn't matter if solar or wind are less than ideal. If they can supplant coal and gas production get them on the grid.

We spend a lot of time thinking about electricity generation, but transportation is just as large a contributor to emissions. Person car and truck transportation makes up about 20% of our total GHG emissions. So infrastructure changes that incentivize dense living, walking, biking and public transit are just as important as reconfiguring the grid. And those things are going to have to happen at the municipal level anyway, that's where those decisions get made.

In the long run we are also going to need clean tech solutions. But we can't afford to wait for them. And we can't keep living the way we are and assume some new technology is going to rescue us. We've done that for nearly four decades, and nothing's appeared. We have the technology to make the needed changes now. And we know what changes we have to make. So lets just do them. Yeah, it means some lifestyle changes. With the right incentives and the right infrastructure, people can make those changes. They've dealt with worse in the past. We can get this done.

Serious question - if we aren’t going to hit the target and therefore are going to face serious consequences, wouldn’t we be better off preparing for the consequences than futilely wasting our efforts trying to prevent them and also being unprepared for them when they arrive?

By trying to prevent them, we lessen their effects.

Do we? By how much?

Sounds like we still need to prepare for the effects.

By how much would depend on what is done, and I didn't imply we didn't need to prepare for them. We should do both.

Should we? Perhaps not if how much turns out to only be a little.

(Full disclosure: I didn't read the full UN report, but I did read the UN Summary for Policymakers [1])

c0nducktr's claim "By trying to prevent them, we lessen their effects" is backed up by the summary. In particular, the summary addresses the following question:

What would happen if...

(A) we could magically go carbon neutral right now? (i.e. "what are the lingering/2nd-order effects of the all of our carbon emissions so far?")

(B) we curbed emissions so global warming[2] stabilized to 1.5°C by $TARGET_YEAR (without "overshooting" that goal [3])

(D) we curbed emissions so global warming stabilized to 2.0°C by $TARGET_YEAR

It turns out that there are real differences between each outcome -- even between (B) & (C) (See A.3.2). Section B addresses specific differences wrt how bad things will get at different levels of global warming (mainly 1.5°C vs. 2°C).

For example:

(A) Immediate effects (B.3.1): "Of 105,000 species studied, 6% of insects, 8% of plants and 4% of vertebrates are projected to lose over half of their climatically determined geographic range for global warming of 1°C, compared with 18% of insects, 16% of plants and 8% of vertebrates for global warming of 2°C (medium confidence)"

(B) Secondary effects ("Reason for Concern #5"): "Large-scale singular events: are relatively large, abrupt and sometimes irreversible changes in systems that are caused by global warming. Examples include disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets." If a marginal increase in the level of global warming causes a singular event to happen, then that increase causes a disproportionate amount of suffering via its secondary effects.

(C) Lingering effects (A.2): "Warming from anthropogenic emissions from the pre-industrial period to the present will persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise, with associated impacts (high confidence)"

That said, you are totally right that we still need to prepare for the effects, and we need to do it sooner rather than later. E.g. "(B.6.2) Adaptation is expected to be more challenging for ecosystems, food and health systems at 2°C of global warming than for 1.5°C (medium confidence)."

Unfortunately, global warming is expected to have disproportionate impact on some vulnerable regions/ecosystems (e.g. coasts & tropical regions). Some of these vulnerable regions are Least Developed Countries and/or small countries with correspondingly small infrastructure budgets (e.g. some island nations). On an individual level, it may be "advantageous" for less-vulnerable nations to focus on improving their own infrastructure, rather than reducing their carbon footprint. In economics, this "advantage" is called a "negative externality"[4] (aka "tragedy of the commons")... it's part of what got us into this mess in the first place.

----------------------------------

FOOTNOTES:

[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/summary-for-policy-makers/

[2] Note: the term "global warming" is an average value -- robust to normal fluctuations in temperature. It's defined as the average temperature at the earth's surface over a period of 30 years. So the "1950's level of global warming" is the average surface temp over the period [1950 - 15, 1950 + 15] == [1935, 1965].

[3] "overshooting" here means "letting the peak levels of global warming exceed 1.5°C". Note: if we let global warming[2] exceed 1.5°C for just a few years (and still get down to <= 1.5°C by $TARGET_YEAR), it still counts as "overshooting".

[4] https://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Market_failures/Externalit...

Thank you for this serious answer!

For the most part, the things we need to do to prevent the consequences are the exact same things we need to do to prepare for them:

- Build dense, walkable housing with solid bike infrastructure and public transit so that people don't have to emit carbon on a daily basis to get around.

- Move the power grid to renewables, especially distributed renewables like solar and small wind producers, which will be more resilient in the face of natural disasters. Nuclear and hydro are also definitely an important part of the mix, and we should continue to research storage options.

- Areas on the coasts need to start relocating people further inland. Sea walls can temporarily delay the inevitable, but in the US semi-annual Katrinas, Harveys, and Marias are going to make the south eastern and gulf coasts unlivable.

- Likewise, if you live outwest, consider moving back east to the midwest. The fires are only going to get worse, and water is only going to get more scare. The aquifers are going to run dry in a decade or two. The west cannot support anything remotely resembling its current habitation density over the long term.

- Inland cities in the midwest should prepare for mass migrations by overbuilding dense, walkable housing and everything else needed to support it (retail, offices) in compact urban areas. That means urbanizing the downtowns of many midsized cities that are resisting it. And for the older sprawling major cities, they need to incentivize much more compact development and develop public transit systems that can make up the difference.

- Everywhere, we should be relocalizing the food system and looking for ways to move towards a food system based on agro-ecology, that can provide natural habitat and sequester carbon, while also producing food. That mostly means tree crops and silvopasture.

All of these things will _both_ help reduce the consequences and help prepare for them.

> disincentivizing driving in the process [...] It doesn't matter how small or insignificant your town may seem, every little bit helps

You mentioned working in tech. Wonder what you think about people working from home. Do you see any hope in making progress there. At least as far as programming is concerned, that's one job that can be done remotely. Getting Google, FB or say Microsoft to let people work from home would make a nice difference on the traffic footprint locally.

Other companies are likely to follow suit as well.

> We need to get people using solar and wind to power their homes. We can do these things at the local level.

What are some ways to do it? A local solar plant or rooftop panels on houses. I'd like do it on my house, it's just too expensive it would take too many years for it to pay off. Tax incentives perhaps?

> So you can totally be forgiven for having panic attacks

In this case she got her (the woman article talk about as an example) children to have panic attacks. That doesn't seem healthy. Panicking leads to paralysis just as much is it can lead to meaningful action. I wouldn't want firefighters or doctors to panic when I am in a burning building on a hospital for instance.

> We pretty much know what we have to do -- we have to totally transform our society -- and we know how we have to do it. The issue is over coming the inertia and building the political will to do it.

Agreed, good point.

Working remotely is great for any knowledge job. I work remotely and have done so for over six years. The team I work on is very collaborative and we often pair program or do video chats to consult about a piece of code or a problem. Remote working is no barrier to that.

There's really no reason at all that any knowledge job -- anything where your primary work is mental and not manual -- couldn't be remote. Sales is maybe an exception to that since it often requires in person schmoozing.

But yeah, remote working is great. It's definitely more sustainable and could save a lot of commute carbon. If it saw wider adoption it could potentially also ease some of the housing pressure on cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and New York; revitalizing a lot of dying small towns in the process. Since the businesses could be based in the big cities, but their employees could live anywhere.

---

For getting solar panels on people's home, one of the policies I'm considering running on is the creation of a municipal fund that would purchase rooftop solar for houses in my city, and be repaid through people's utility bills. Basically, people would apply to the fund, low income home owners would be prioritized, the fund would pay for the initial installation of the panels, and then the home owners would repay the cost of the panels over the course of their life through their utility bill payments. In this way, we could gradually get solar on basically every house in the city.

I'm sure eventually the local electric utility would get frustrated - because at a certain point the solar generation makes it so that they're losing money maintaining the lines. We have a municipal sewer utility, so we could just offer to have them buy out the power lines and maintain them - municipalizing the electric grid in the process.

---

With respect to the panic attacks, I know a number of people, adults who are climate activists, who've also had panic attacks about climate change. Honestly, what would you prefer the woman to do, lie about the state of the climate and what these kids are going to be up against? I mean, I wouldn't talk about it with super young kids, but I'm not going to lie to my kids. Panic attacks are not an unreasonable response. It's terrifying and overwhelming.

Kids being born today are probably going to live to 2100, and may well see the total collapse of civilization and the beginnings of a new Permian extinction in their lifetimes if we can't change course.

Panicking isn't productive. But it is understandable. Most of the people I know who've had panic attacks are far from paralyzed, they're the among most drive and active people I know.

> I work remotely and have done so for over six years.

Yeah I work remotely as well and enjoy it. I don't have to buy fossil fuels to burn to get to work, I have more time. I think remote work, is probably another mini-revolution that can happen that would change our society for the better in regard to the climate footprint.

Good point on revitalizing small towns. But it needs larger companies to start offering this type of work. I am currently hesitant to move to a smaller town or an area with less tech presence because if I have to switch, I don't know if next employer will accept remote work.

> Basically, people would apply to the fund, low income home owners would be prioritized, the fund would pay for the initial installation of the panels, and then the home owners would repay the cost of the panels over the course of their life through their utility bill payments. In this way, we could gradually get solar on basically every house in the city.

That's a great idea. I like it. Good luck running, I'd support you if you ran in my town.

> lie about the state of the climate and what these kids are going to be up against?

Any issues can be framed in various ways and if it induces children to cry and be paralyzed by fear, anger whatever I don't think it's productive. Children, and perhaps adults, do better if besides seeing a problem, they are also offered some way to solve it. "Climate is changing, but here what we are going to do to help...". Stuff like "We are writing to a Congressperson, we are selling our car, taking a bus on Fridays etc" is a lot different than "You'll drown in a flood, or live on the streets or die of hunger and nothing can be done".

> I don't think anyone commenting on this post who is downplaying the reaction has really grappled with what we're up against here.

It's ironic, you were talking about the scientific reality of what we're up against here. I assume the group psychology that the article discusses is only going to get worse as well.

Back in 1989, the late Gore Vidal wrote an essay titled "Cue the Green God, Ted" (Ted Koppel, TV anchor-critter at the time.)

Basically outlining how the 'green' cause would serve to keep order. He could see it coming ...

As in https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/arge...

I think people are internalizing what is essentially a macro issue down to the personal level. In reality, individuals are likely to be fine. We're not going to wake up one day and be instantly vaporized.

The section about people not wanting to have children because of climate change is really shocking. I find it crazy that people would literally weed themselves out of the gene pool on the idea that the planet will be uninhabitable in the very near future.

Humans are resilient, humans solve problems, humans have technology. Maybe this will push us to go to space sooner than we would have? Maybe we'll create underground cities? This is an opportunity to advance human technology and society, not the time to throw in the towel and commit genetic suicide. Thankfully I think most people wouldn't do that, it's just that doesn't make for compelling clickbait so those thoughts didn't get included in this article.

You're not going to weed yourself out of the gene pool by not having kids. Your genetic material is widely distributed amongst 7.7 billion other people.

I agree with you on the having kids issue, but I disagree that individuals should just treat it as a macro problem.

Even in the US (where I live) there is planning you can do on an individual level to help you avoid some of the negative consequences of climate change. I actually think this would be an interesting discussion on HN. Some of the steps that I think are most important concern mainly where you choose to live for a specific example Miami could fare very badly wrt to flooding and increased storms. I can't imagine that will be good for property values not to mention safety. I would be interested to read about anyone else's suggestions on what plans someone could make on an individual level for both themselves and their children.

I agree. People should be informed and responsible. Adaptation is going to require a lot of changes. Might as well acknowledge them and start dealing with them (as you suggest).

I found the article to be anything but responsible though. More like hysterical.

> We're not going to wake up one day and be instantly vaporized.

Nice strawman. No one ever said we're going to "wake up and be instantly vaporized". What's actually going to happen is this:

- Food is going to continuously get more expensive as droughts shorten growing seasons, desertification and flooding eliminate arable land, the ocean depopulates, and increased atmospheric CO2 "de-nutrients" the crops that do grow.

- We're going to rack up unbelievable debt trying to either migrate people out of flood zones or try to delay their immersion. I've said before that once Miami starts flooding enough that people can no longer stick their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is wrong, Florida real estate owners will probably demand some ultra-expensive engineering megaproject to try and save the city on the taxpayers' dime. The same will happen in every other low-lying coastal region. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12342617 quotes a figure of $180 million just to migrate 600 people in Alaska; now multiply that by the size of the population in coastal areas and get a glimpse of the hole we're driving into.

- Building on that last point, human migration is going to increase dramatically as people try to escape more affected regions for better-off ones. The current level of migration, relatively tiny all things considered, is already causing fatal autoimmune reactions in Europe and North America, and it's going to increase by orders of magnitude. Not to mention the additional unrest when the wealthy inevitably retreat to (literal or metaphorical) walled cities to escape the problem.

- The above factors of resource scarcity, political unrest, and finger-pointing are going to cause global wars.

So yes, this will affect all of us on the personal level of having a lower standard of living in a world of permanent social turmoil. It is not going to be fine.

> Maybe this will push us to go to space sooner than we would have? Maybe we'll create underground cities? This is an opportunity to advance human technology and society,

Even disregarding that your own use of the word "maybe" already indicates a certain amount of hopelessness about the situation, this is a fallacy of "just because circumstances forced us to develop this technology, that technology is a Good Thing and represents societal progress". I don't want to live underground or in space, I want to live on a healthy planet with lots of open space and diverse environments. At the very best, either of these options would be like spending your entire life in a climate-controlled office building. I'd prefer death.

> What's actually going to happen is this:

I don't think anyone knows what's going to happen. Definitely not extrapolated out as far as you have.

> We're going to rack up unbelievable debt trying to either migrate people out of flood zones or try to delay their immersion. I've said before that once Miami starts flooding enough that people can no longer stick their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is wrong, Florida real estate owners will probably demand some ultra-expensive engineering megaproject to try and save the city on the taxpayers' dime.

I agree, but how many years away is that scenario? 100 years? `Wikipedia has a few predictions in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise#21st_century but most of them predict something between 1ft and 4ft. (Unless there is a catastrophic event.)

I guess it's not enough to drown Miami, but it may change the coastline. Anyway most people investment is not thinking about 100 years in the future, and I never understood why people invest in an area that is heavy in hurricanes (even in normal climate).

I'm sorry, but being pushed to living in space or underground sooner rather than later doesn't sound like something we should look at as a good thing. Most people don't want to do those things.

It's inevitable that we'll have to go to space someday if we want to human race to survive. "Good" or "bad" has nothing to do with it.

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