Is there such a thing as "environmental depression"?

Question

I consider myself someone who cares about the environment. Whenever I hear about global warming or the inevitable decline of our planet, I get very depressed and start feeling hopeless for the future of the planet and the quality of my life as well as my future children and grandchildren. When a recent report stated that warming would not cease unless we halted emissions completely, I realized that this is basically an impossible task and started feeling very angry and increasingly helpless. How can I begin to enjoy life guiltlessly when I know that our generation is truely the beginning of the end of quality life as we know it?

Answer 1

Well, its all a bunch of hooey, actually...so be happy

Answer 2

The moment we had the industrial revolution and the "pea fog" that went with it, I think that's where the origins of environmental depression are.

Remember that you can get away from it and that there are some of the best minds working at solving industrial effects within society.  

We will not still be the same in two years because thats our nature.

Answer 3

This is a difficult problem. One way to approach it is to examine the nature of why we feel guilt. When we were children we were taught to feel guilty when we disobeyed "the rules", or didn't live up to "the standards". The point is we were taught to "feel guilt" as a responce to stimuli, and our parents were taught and their parents.... to get out of the continuing circle, we have to want to, that is not as easy as a person would think... 'cause feeling guilty takes the place of making real efforts to do something, or it eats up the energy for doing anything, feeling guilty far too often, at least for me, becomes a kind of excuse for ....doing nothing... kind of a catch 22 situation.

One trick, as I see it, is to change the "guilt responce" by actually intentionally choosing a more useful responce.  Guilt never did any good, did it? it just wastes energy, makes a person feel tired, depressed and like a failure...

Think about why we feel depressed and guilty in the face of envioronmental concerns, is it because we feel helpless in the face of the envioronmental problems we as a world of people face? Are we actually helpless? Perhaps the answer to this kind of depression is to actively do what we can do for the enviornment. "Every hair is counted", small efforts added together do make a difference. We can plant some seeds, grow a garden, walk more, turn off those extra lights, get people interested in joining us, research ways we can make a difference... theres nothing like a job well done to make a person feel good. We faced problems, our children and grand kids will face problems, we do what we must do to work through our problems. Encourage people you are connected with, old and young, to develop skills to deal with the problems we face. The point is we can do what we can do, and that is something and we can do that as well as we can. Tackle the problem head on, to the degree we are able.

For myself, I try to remember, I can always smile at other people, I can always try be a source of encouragment, I can always make the world a better place that way. This is a strange and challanging time to be alive, I like to think that the lessons we humans must learn in order to survive must change us profoundly for the better.

Answer 4

Use your commin sense and THINK, You are being feed so much garbage today about this climate change. " Holes in the ozone " gone-Lots of bad hurricanes-gone- global warming-gone-What are they going to think of next. The only scientists that push this garbage are the ones making big $ from pushing it.

     Go with what makingco says. be happy.

Answer 5

You need to focus on making things better within your capabilities.  We are all limited in some way whether through knowledge or disabilities.  Find an area to focus on and improve that particular area.  For example recycling is a start.