It appears the progressive narrative about climate change has worked a little too well. Liberals are allowing their “end of the world” fears to interfere with their lives to the point that therapy is required. Many claim that climate change fears are causing an “overwhelming sense of despair,” including panic attacks and obsessive concerns over the state of the climate.
This progressive-stoked phenomenon has earned a name among liberals, who call it “climate anxiety.”
PBS NewsHour host John Yang highlighted the end of the world, citing “triple-digit temperatures for days on end, smoke from record-setting wildfires fouling the air, warming oceans, bleaching coral reefs.” He brought in appropriately unhinged guests for interviews, and after ensuring viewers were feeling renewed urgency and panic, he introduced “climate psychology therapist” Leslie Davenport.
Davenport is a self-proclaimed expert on “climate aware therapy,” offering services to address the grief and anxiety of climate change. Calling herself an educator, Davenport also offers recommendations for her panicked “patients” to live what she calls an “ecoharmonious life.”
The “climate psychologist” is part of a newly emerging get-rich-quick scheme designed to cash in on liberal fear-mongering by offering an avenue of escape for “patients” to discuss their sadness, grief, distress, and anger over climate change.
Yang asked Davenport to identify the point where a “healthy” concern about climate change turns into climate anxiety. Davenport responded by saying that the range of emotions felt by those suffering climate anxiety is perfectly normal, healthy, and reasonable reactions.
The “climate psychologist” claims that she has seen a rise in the number of patients seeking “climate therapy” over the past five years. Many of her “patients” have allowed the fear to interfere with functioning in daily life, causing sleep disturbances, intrusive thoughts, and physiological stress, including rapid heartbeats. It can, Davenport explains, become someone’s predominant concern.
Davenport went on to add that those experiencing climate anxiety are more in tune and aware of what’s happening in the world. Her patients, she claims, are empathetic and paying attention.
Davenport encourages people in the grips of climate anxiety to “find their own way of becoming part of the solution” and join a group of like-minded people in “climate cafes or climate circles.”
In addition, she recommends someone in the throes of crippling climate anxiety refer to “the climate aware therapist directory,” pointing out, “Since this training again is not built in yet to the mental health field, there are some therapists who have chosen to have this as a specialization.”
For PBS, the segment was recycled news. In November of 2021, they appealed to parents to address their children’s climate change panic. In that segment, PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff cited a poll, commissioned by her own show, that found a “significant percentage” of kids believe climate change will impact their future, from choosing where to live to having kids.
For the 2021 piece, PBS paraded a high school student suffering from climate change panic attacks in front of the camera. The teen alleged that her panic attacks and sense of “impending doom” kept her from studying for the ACT.
But If PBS was planning on focusing attention on climate anxiety during this latest segment, they succeeded.
But not in the way they had hoped. Social media mocked the segment in the scathingly brutal way that only social media users can.
One poster observed, “In a segment that looked like something out of Monty Python, PBS NewsHour brought on a therapist to help people suffering from ‘climate anxiety.” Another noted, “NEWS FROM CLOWN WORLD: PBS NewsHour brought on a therapist to help people suffering from ‘climate anxiety.”
“For troubled individuals who have reached the end of their mental tethers from watching too much climate fear porn and are suffering from ‘climate anxiety’, PBS Rolls Out ‘Climate Psychology Therapist’ For Armageddon-Coping Session,” writes another.
Liberals have changed the narrative from “global cooling” to “global warming” and have recently gone one step farther, upgrading “global warming” to “global boiling” in response to summer being hot. Per United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, July 2023 was set to be the “hottest on record” and ushered in the “era of global boiling.” The phrase is designed to renew panic among those who may have slipped into complacency and gotten “climate weary.”
But, just in case progressive rhetoric has gone too far and safe spaces aren’t enough anymore, climate psychologists like Leslie Davenport are available to help liberals deal with the fallout of their own amped up fear mongering.
