Sunday, August 30, 2009

The Reaction Of Some Of the Public To The Media Campaign On Climate Change

With all this constant doom and gloom being hyped by our scientist’s, politician’s, and media outlets and with some people not being aware there is even another side to the arguement, is it any wonder that the following is starting to happen:

We describe a patient with climate change delusion a previously unreported phenomenon. A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an 8 month history of depressed mood... He also had visions of apocalyptic events... The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of 'millions of people' through exhaustion of water supplies. He quoted'internet research' to substantiate this. The patient described that 'I feel guilty about it', had attempted to stop drinking... He was unable to acknowledge that the belief was unreasonable when challenged.

Or this one:

Psychiatrists in America have identified a new mental illness that threatens the very fabric of society: an obsession with saving the planet. Some people are so addicted to cutting their carbon emissions that they seem to have gone quite mad. Take, for example, Sharon Astyk, who makes her four children sleep in a huddle so she doesn't have to turn on the heating.

Or this one:

Or Jay Matsueda, who waters his lawn with his own urine so that he doesn't have to flush the loo; he says that it was his ex-girlfriend's choice of gas-guzzling car, rather than his habit of weeing on the grass, that led to the break-down of their relationship.

Or even this one:

The New York Times, have dubbed the problem "carborexia". A carborexic is someone who has become irrationally compulsive in their efforts to reduce their impact on the planet, and who becomes stressed when dealing with those whose sensibilities are not so finely attuned.

Walking into a friend's house, they may start to sweat on seeing the 4WD in the garage and the plasma TV on the wall. They will bite their fingernails on noticing appliances not switched off when not in use. And they will finally crack when they hear someone flushing the toilet unnecessarily. Yes - apparently there are such occasions. Quickly muttering their goodbyes, they walk 5km home carrying in a mesh carry bag the pockmarked organic vegetables they had planned to eat raw at your house.

In the US, one Seattle family told The New York Times they scrub out and reuse the plastic bags in which their children take their school lunches, and the used nappy bag their toddler brings home from childcare.

This all seemed fine in people's own homes, but if it started to affect how they interacted with others then there was a problem, said Elizabeth Carll, a New York psychologist who specialises in obsessive compulsive behaviour. "If you can't have something in your house that isn't green or organic, if you can't eat at a relative's house because they don't serve organic food, if you're criticising friends because they're not living up to your standards of green, that's a problem," she said.

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