Climate guide

Climate change is a nagging issue for many people because it is so big, diverse, and overwhelming, as big as the planet itself. So, how to explain climate change?

Sociologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and even anthropologists and economists have tackled the phenomenon of Climate Weltschmerz, meaning people experience angst as the enormity of climate change overrides sensibilities, and sanity, and sadly some go insane.

Not only that, but dishearteningly, it’s been reported that couples refrain from having children because of the overbearing threat of global warming spoiling a child’s transcendent (hopefully) future. Also, there are abundant reports throughout the world that the uncertainties surrounding climate change inhibit hopes, dreams, and wishes for a bright future, as tinges of impending darkness supplant fantasies of buoyant cheerfulness.

Well, relief can be found in Mark Jaccard’s The Citizen’s Guide to Climate Success (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

He tackles the world’s biggest issue head-on, while implicitly making the assumption that “we still have time,” a subjective comfort factor. Of course, there are scientists that wonder if “we still have time,” but that’s for another time, another story, and certainly worth pondering.

Mark Jaccard, professor of Sustainable Energy at the School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, offers relief for citizens that feel overwhelmed by the complexities and overarching enormities of global warming. After all, by all appearances, it’s way too big to wrap one’s arms around all by oneself. But, that does not inhibit professor Jaccard, who astutely separates myth from reality, a problem that’s found all over creation, making it so much easier to come to grips with one of the most complex existential threats of all time.

He not only takes a lot of the mystery out of the climate change imbroglio, but he also tackles the myths that drive, and divide, public discourse, while proffering novel answers for citizens that want to “make a difference.”

The Citizen’s Guide belongs on the bookshelves of people who (1) search for answers (2) want to separate truth from fiction, and (3) want to sleep nights without bolting up in the midst of the night, screaming!

accard’s book is an antidote to the global warming heebie-jeebies, so, don’t jump off that steep ledge until first reading it. It’ll soothe rattled nerves. Bury your nose in his wonderful, easy-to-read, yet academically oriented book filled with everything you should know but don’t know about climate change, thereby, inspiring a great sense of even greater relief.

Excerpted from: 'Climate Confusion, Angst, and Sleeplessness'.

Counterpunch.org