The Greenlandic Perspective Survey tells us that 90% of Greenlanders accept that climate change is happening.
More than that, it’s making them anxious and depressed.
Given that they live in cultural and climactic conditions that put them at the frontline of ecological change, we might be well advised to take their thoughts and feelings seriously.
Where they go, we may very well follow.
To many it seems we already have one foot planted in an unbearably dystopian ( relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice ) future.
To others this sort of scenario is delusional, a symptom of media-fed panic.
In a sense, all responses to the current ecological climate are mad, or at least maddening.
Take the threat seriously and risk succumbing to solastalgia ( the anguish caused by environmental alterations due to droughts and destructive mining), or blot it out and be accused of opting out of reality.
In the first case you madden yourself and in the second you madden other people. So quite often the only reasonable response is melancholia, anger and helplessness.
Who is Most At risk?
- Children
- Women, pregnant women, and postpartum mothers
- Senior Citizens
- Native Inhabitants
- Those with prior or existing mental health struggles or trauma
- People who are poor
- Those with heart and lung ailments and other disabilities
“The intersection between the climate emergency and mental and physical health is about to become one of the world’s major health crisis.”
Reference- The Guardian, American Psychiatric Association, Greenlandic Perspectives Survey