09/08/2021

(AU The Conversation) Australians Are 3 Times More Worried About Climate Change Than COVID. A Mental Health Crisis Is Looming

The Conversation -  |  | 

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Authors
  •  is Senior Lecturer and Research Fellow in Knowledge Translation, Monash University
  •  is Senior Research Fellow, Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation (MCHRI), Monash University
  •  is Director, Sustainable Health Network, Deakin University
As we write this article, the Delta strain of COVID-19 is reminding the world the pandemic is far from over, with millions of Australians in lockdown and infection rates outpacing a global vaccination effort.

In the northern hemisphere, record breaking temperatures in the form of heat domes recently caused uncontrollable “firebombs”, while unprecedented floods disrupted millions of people. Hundreds of lives have been lost due to heat stress, drownings and fire.

The twin catastrophic threats of climate change and a pandemic have created an “epoch of incredulity”. It’s not surprising many Australians are struggling to cope.

During the pandemic’s first wave in 2020, we collected nationwide data from 5,483 adults across Australia on how climate change affects their mental health. In our new paper, we found that while Australians are concerned about COVID-19, they were almost three times more concerned about climate change.

That Australians are very worried about climate change is not a new finding. But our study goes further, warning of an impending epidemic of mental health related disorders such as eco-anxiety, climate disaster-related post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and future-orientated despair.

Which Australians are most worried?

We asked Australians to compare their concerns about climate change, COVID, retirement, health, ageing and employment, using a four-point scale (responses ranging from “not a problem” to “very much a problem”).

A high level of concern about climate change was reported across the whole population regardless of gender, age, or residential location (city or rural, disadvantaged or affluent areas). Women, young adults, the well-off, and those in their middle years (aged 35 to 54) showed the highest levels of concern about climate change.

The latter group (aged 35 to 54) may be particularly worried because they are, or plan to become, parents and may be concerned about the future for their children.

The high level of concern among young Australians (aged 18 to 34) is not surprising, as they’re inheriting the greatest existential crisis faced by any generation. This age group have shown their concern through numerous campaigns such as the School Strike 4 Climate, and several successful litigations.

Of the people we surveyed in more affluent groups, 78% reported a high level of worry. But climate change was still very much a problem for those outside this group (42%) when compared to COVID-related worry (27%).

Recent flooding in Germany and Belgium killed more than 200 people. Boris Roessler/dpa via AP 

We also found many of those who directly experienced a climate-related disaster — bushfires, floods, extreme heat waves — reported symptoms consistent with PTSD. This includes recurrent memories of the trauma event, feeling on guard, easily startled and nightmares.

Others reported significant pre-trauma and eco-anxiety symptoms. These include recurrent nightmares about future trauma, poor concentration, insomnia, tearfulness, despair and relationship and work difficulties.

Overall, we found the inevitability of climate threats limit Australians’ ability to feel optimistic about their future, more so than their anxieties about COVID.

How are people managing their climate worry?

Our research also provides insights into what people are doing to manage their mental health in the face of the impending threat of climate change.

Joining protests, such as the School Strike 4 Climate, helps some Australians deal with their anxiety about climate change. AAP Image/James Ross
Rather than seeking professional mental health support such as counsellors or psychologists, many Australians said they were self-prescribing their own remedies, such as being in natural environments (67%) and taking positive climate action (83%), where possible.

Many said they strengthen their resilience through individual action (such as limiting their plastic use), joining community action (such as volunteering), or joining advocacy efforts to influence policy and raise awareness.

Indeed, our research from earlier this year showed environmental volunteering has mental health benefits, such as improving connection to place and learning more about the environment.

It’s both ironic and understandable Australians want to be in natural environments to lessen their climate-related anxiety. Events such as the mega fires of 2019 and 2020 may be renewing Australians’ understanding and appreciation of nature’s value in enhancing the quality of their lives. There is now ample research showing green spaces improve psychological well-being.

Walking in nature can improve your mental well-being. Sebastian Pichler/Unsplash

An impending epidemic

Our research illuminates the profound, growing mental health burden on Australians.

As the global temperature rises and climate-related disasters escalate in frequency and severity, this mental health burden will likely worsen. More people will suffer symptoms of PTSD, eco-anxiety, and more.

Of great concern is that people are not seeking professional mental health care to cope with climate change concern. Rather, they are finding their own solutions. The lack of effective climate change policy and action from the Australian government is also likely adding to the collective despair.

As Harriet Ingle and Michael Mikulewicz — a neuropsychologist and a human geographer from the UK — wrote in their 2020 paper:
For many, the ominous reality of climate change results in feelings of powerlessness to improve the situation, leaving them with an unresolved sense of loss, helplessness, and frustration.
It is imperative public health responses addressing climate change at the individual, community, and policy levels, are put into place. Governments need to respond to the health sector’s calls for effective climate related responses, to prevent a looming mental health crisis.

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(Climate News Network) Flood Risk Will Rise As Climate Heat Intensifies

Climate News Network - Tim Radford

A warmer world will be a wetter one. Ever more people will face a higher flood risk as rivers rise and city streets fill up.

July 2021: High water on the River Rhine as it flows through flooded Germany. Image: By Gerda Arendt, via Wikimedia Commons
LONDON − In a world of climate change, the flood risk will be more intense and more frequent, presenting higher danger to ever more people in a greater number of countries.

In this century alone, the global population has increased by 18%. But the number of people exposed to damage and death by rising waters has increased by more than 34%.

This finding is not based on mathematical simulations powered by weather data. It is based on direct and detailed observation.

Researchers report in the journal Nature that they looked at more than 12,700 satellite images, at a resolution of 250 metres, of 913 large flood events between the years 2000 and 2015.

During those years, and those floods, water spilled from the rivers to inundate a total of 2.23 million square kilometres.

This, considered as one event, would cover a total area larger than Saudi Arabia.

And during those first 15 years of the century, the number of people directly affected by the floods was at least 255m, and possibly 290m.
“Governments across the world have been too slow in reducing greenhouse gas emissions . . . This, alongside the current floods in Europe, is the wake-up call we need”

In those 15 years, the numbers of people in the way of the ever more devastating floods rose by at least 58m, and possibly as many as 86m. That’s a rise of as much as 24%.

It will get worse. According to the researchers, climate change and the multiplication of human numbers will extend the reach of flood risk: 32 nations already experience ever more flooding. By 2030, another 25 countries will have joined them.

The humans caught up in the sickening flow of mud, sewage and silt spilling from the rising rivers will mostly be in south and south-east Asia − think of the Indus, Ganges-Brahmaputra and Mekong Rivers − and many of them will have migrated to the danger zones: poverty and population pressure will leave them no choice.

None of this should come as a surprise.

In the past 50 years, according to a new compilation by the World Meteorological Organisation, weather, climate and water were implicated in 50% of all disasters of any kind; in 45% of all reported deaths and 74% of all economic losses.

Floods have claimed 58,700 lives in the last five decades.

Between them, floods and storms − the two are often linked − cost Europe at least US$377bn in economic losses.

Higher flooding frequency

And things will certainly get much worse for Europe as global average temperatures continue to rise in response to ever higher greenhouse gas emissions from ever greater use of fossil fuels. That is because what had once been relatively rare events will grow in force and frequency.

More heat means more evaporation, and a warmer atmosphere has a greater capacity to absorb water vapour. So it will rain harder.

And the arrival, say researchers in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, of intense, slow-moving storms that precipitate devastating flash floods of the kind that swept Belgium and Germany this summer will by the close of the century become 14 times more frequent.

“Governments across the world have been too slow in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming continues apace,” said Hayley Fowler, a climate scientist at Newcastle University in the UK, and one of the researchers.

“This study suggests that changes to extreme storms will be significant and cause an increase in the frequency of devastating flooding across Europe. This, alongside the current floods in Europe, is the wake-up call we need.” 

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(AU SMH) Global Warming Pushing Emperor Penguins To Brink Of Extinction By 2100

Sydney Morning Herald - Miki Perkins

The US is now considering listing the emperor penguin as endangered because of climate change. A picture of the Emperor penguin colony in Antarctica’s Atka Bay. Credit: Stefan Christmann

It was aboard the gutsy Russian icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov, sailing between the Antarctic peninsula and Ross Sea, that the passengers discovered a new emperor penguin colony in the old-fashioned way: with their eyes.

Mary-Anne Lea, who was then a guide aboard the vessel and is now a professor in marine ecology at the University of Tasmania, has that moment 15 years ago etched in her memory.

With a colleague, Professor Lea managed one quick flight to the colony aboard an ageing Russian helicopter and they waded through thigh-deep snow to take this photo.

A picture of the Siple Island emperor colony discovered by passengers aboard the Kapitan Khlebnikov. Credit: Lisa Trotter

“It took my breath away. It was a real voyage of discovery for everyone on board to see them in on the ice,” says Professor Lea. “They are such beautiful birds that live in some of the harshest conditions on earth, breeding in the middle of the Antarctic winter. I was just in awe.”

But climate change is threatening emperor penguins with extinction in much of their range, and this week federal wildlife officials in the United States announced a proposal to protect them under the Endangered Species Act.

Professor Lea was aboard the Kapitan Khlebnikov when it discovered a new colony of emperor penguins.
The Antarctic scientific community has been raising the alarm on global warming and climate change for around 40 years, Professor Lea says. She finds it shocking that scientists were discovering new emperor colonies until only a few years ago, and now are charting their demise as a result of the climate emergency: “It’s so devastating that’s the situation we’re now in.”

Emperor penguins live for most of the year on sea ice - which is essentially frozen ocean - and need it to breed, raise their young in the dark Antarctic winters and escape from predators like orca and sea leopards.

Scientists like Professor Mary-Anne Lea, (shown here with gentoo penguins), say it’s still possible to prevent emperor penguins becoming functionally extinct within 100 years.
But this vast sea ice is disappearing or breaking apart because the human use of fossil fuels has caused global temperatures to rise.

Population modelling by a United States study led by Dr Stephanie Jenouvrier forecasts that emperor penguins will become “quasi-extinct” by 2100 if sea ice declines at the projected rate. The report was published this week in Global Change Biology.

Sea ice is breaking apart and melting because of human-induced climate change. Credit: Mary-Anne Lea
The study was led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and authored by 14 international scientists, including Australian scientist Barbara Wienecke, an emperor penguin expert with the Australian Antarctic Division.

“If global warming alters the patterns of ice break-out or stability, the ice may disappear before the chicks are ready to go to sea,” says Dr Wienecke. “Sea ice is also critical for prey species of emperor penguins such as krill.”

But the report’s authors also stressed that emperor penguin (affectionately known as “emps” amongst Antarctic scientists) extinction is not inevitable. If action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris climate agreement, enough sea ice will be left to support a reduced population of emperor penguins, they found.

“We need to act now, before it’s too late,” said Stephanie Jenouvrier, the study’s lead author and a seabird ecologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The tallest of all penguins, emperors stand almost 1.2 metres. After laying a single egg, females go off to hunt, and males nurture the egg through sub-zero temperatures by holding it on their feet and covering it in a feathered pouch.

Climate policy
Warming sparks penguin breeding boom but experts sound note of caution

Professor Lea said an endangered listing would enable national programs in Antarctica to prioritise research and conservation of the species more generally.

And she remains an optimist: “This is the first step. I really hope we can galvanise to save this iconic species.”

Of the 60 known emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica, 22 are located within Australia’s areas of operation in East Antarctica.
“This is the first step. I really hope we can galvanise to save this iconic species.”
Professor Mary-Anne Lea
Australia is currently involved in an international process to review the conservation status of emperor penguins in Antarctica and mechanisms for their protection.

Global warming

In 2016, the Antarctic’s second-largest colony lost more than 10,000 chicks in an area that had been thought safe.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species currently categorises emperor penguinsF as “near threatened” with a decreasing population.

On Monday evening the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change will publish its sixth assessment on the state of the climate and is expected to reveal more bad news on the extent global warming since the last major assessment in 2014.

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