CLIMATE Change: are fueling mental DERANGEMENTS

The media wants you to know it’s hot outside

… “Heat health emergency”

… “Nearly half the US at risk,”

… If heat waves were as deadly as the press proclaims

… Homo sapiens couldn’t have survived thousands of years without air conditioning

… Humans have shown remarkable resilience and adaptation

… until modern times, when half of society lost its cool over climate change

… “Extreme Temperatures Are Hurting Our Mental Health,”

… every social problem under the sun is now attributable to climate change

… But it’s alarmist stories about bad weather that are fueling mental derangements worthy of the DSM-5

… not the warm summer air itself

… people might adapt over time

… higher temperatures could become normal and not be experienced as anomalous or extreme

… Before the media began reporting on putative temperature records

… the scientific evidence for which is also weak

… heat waves were treated as a normal part of summer

… These anxieties are no more rational than the threats from climate change are existential

… there’s nothing normal about climate anxiety

… “some people even grapple with the existential question of whether to have children because of the human toll on the planet’s resources.”

… Climate hypochondriacs deserve to be treated with compassion, much like anyone who suffers from mental illness. They shouldn’t, however, expect everyone else to enable their neuroses