Excellent article! Myself and many of my peers experience a form of climate anxiety that's focused on fear of destructive climate mandates from government as opposed the concern about the climate itself. Is it possible there's spillover from my group into statistics that try to capture climate anxiety?
+10. Much less worried about the federal level now, although still concerned that industry will lobby to keep, e.g. H2 subsidies that Exxon has already started "investing" in.
At the local level, Austin, TX passed an ordinance a few years ago that would have (eventually) ended natural gas use in the city. They were headed off by a state law prohibiting that kind of thing, thank goodness.
Now, suddenly, we find our gas rates have gone up 55%. Presumably, the city had some say in that. They claim they're looking at ways to lower it, but maybe they colluded to raise it as a backdoor way to get the result they wanted all along.
I only looked at one article, but I wonder who is funding these studies. Perhaps I missed the source of funding? As an alum, I've asked about who is funding Yale Climate Connections, but the answer I received was "we don't have to tell you."
Chomsky's quote about power encouraging very lively debate within very tightly policed limits comes to mind. My working hypothesis might be that 'climate anxiety' is perhaps a term used to analytically constrain enquiry to one part of the policy realm when perhaps more appropriate terms to consider might be the broader 'end of (Western) empire anxiety' or '(political) economy anxiety'.
The constraint to the (idealized) realm of the environment might have a tendency to normalize a dialogue in which the unnecessary loss of, or failure to, effectively develop public goods (e.g. infrastructure), leads to a decrease in the material supports for living a good life. Put bluntly, it normalizes hyper-financialization and the consequent reduction of an increasing percentage of the population to debt peons.
A broad reading of human history would perhaps reveal that technological solutions to any 'crisis' are only as good as the state of the political economies they find themselves in and the most dysfunctional (unstable) polities tends to overproduce people seeking 'elite' position and are characterized by widespread popular immiseration (Hudson, Turchin, etc...).
This framing of the debate likely seeks to constrain the nature of the activism engaged in, away from the 'it's time for guillotines'-type.
The word is properly the ablative fem. gerundive of Latin propagare "set forward, extend, spread, increase" (see propagation). Hence, "any movement or organization to propagate some practice or ideology" (1790). The modern political sense ("dissemination of information intended to promote a political point of view") dates from World War I, originally not pejorative or implying bias or deliberate deception. Meaning "material or information propagated to advance a cause, etc." is from 1929.
propaganda | Etymology of propaganda by etymonline
A parent teaching life-lessons to a child is a propagandist. These researchers studying propagandist methods are engaged in a useful project. The dangers of improving such methods lies then - of course - in how the tools are used.
I, for one, am enjoying the subversive meme content related to said climate anxiety (eg. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGvdQwpJvmu/)
interesting
Excellent article! Myself and many of my peers experience a form of climate anxiety that's focused on fear of destructive climate mandates from government as opposed the concern about the climate itself. Is it possible there's spillover from my group into statistics that try to capture climate anxiety?
+10. Much less worried about the federal level now, although still concerned that industry will lobby to keep, e.g. H2 subsidies that Exxon has already started "investing" in.
At the local level, Austin, TX passed an ordinance a few years ago that would have (eventually) ended natural gas use in the city. They were headed off by a state law prohibiting that kind of thing, thank goodness.
Now, suddenly, we find our gas rates have gone up 55%. Presumably, the city had some say in that. They claim they're looking at ways to lower it, but maybe they colluded to raise it as a backdoor way to get the result they wanted all along.
I only looked at one article, but I wonder who is funding these studies. Perhaps I missed the source of funding? As an alum, I've asked about who is funding Yale Climate Connections, but the answer I received was "we don't have to tell you."
Nice article.
Chomsky's quote about power encouraging very lively debate within very tightly policed limits comes to mind. My working hypothesis might be that 'climate anxiety' is perhaps a term used to analytically constrain enquiry to one part of the policy realm when perhaps more appropriate terms to consider might be the broader 'end of (Western) empire anxiety' or '(political) economy anxiety'.
The constraint to the (idealized) realm of the environment might have a tendency to normalize a dialogue in which the unnecessary loss of, or failure to, effectively develop public goods (e.g. infrastructure), leads to a decrease in the material supports for living a good life. Put bluntly, it normalizes hyper-financialization and the consequent reduction of an increasing percentage of the population to debt peons.
A broad reading of human history would perhaps reveal that technological solutions to any 'crisis' are only as good as the state of the political economies they find themselves in and the most dysfunctional (unstable) polities tends to overproduce people seeking 'elite' position and are characterized by widespread popular immiseration (Hudson, Turchin, etc...).
This framing of the debate likely seeks to constrain the nature of the activism engaged in, away from the 'it's time for guillotines'-type.
Posted a link to Twitter with the additional heading, "Camouflaging activist grooming, under the guise of climate research."
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder…
Propaganda
The word is properly the ablative fem. gerundive of Latin propagare "set forward, extend, spread, increase" (see propagation). Hence, "any movement or organization to propagate some practice or ideology" (1790). The modern political sense ("dissemination of information intended to promote a political point of view") dates from World War I, originally not pejorative or implying bias or deliberate deception. Meaning "material or information propagated to advance a cause, etc." is from 1929.
propaganda | Etymology of propaganda by etymonline
A parent teaching life-lessons to a child is a propagandist. These researchers studying propagandist methods are engaged in a useful project. The dangers of improving such methods lies then - of course - in how the tools are used.
There is nothing new under the sun…