Guest Post: Mind Games for Teenagers
A guest post by Owen Jennings:
“Climate change is creating a generation of climate distress and hopelessness,” says Dr Epel, chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioural sciences and a faculty lead of the Climate Change and Mental Health Task Force at the University of California. “That climate distress”, she continues, “is a complex conglomeration of aspects of emotional distress, including depression, anxiety, and hopelessness.”
It is a sobering reality that among the many pressures young people encounter today the constant barrage or doomsday predictions is taking a devastating toll. Being told the world will end removes the will to live especially if accompanied by a plethora of other negative impacts.
Many of the predictions are simply rubbish, a product of scientists desperate to hang on to funding or a tenure combined with a media using sensationalism to try and stay profitable.
The psychological pressure is becoming worse. Not content with playing havoc with young vulnerable minds by piling fear upon fear using unusual weather events as weapons the climate change monsters are now setting impossible targets that they already know full well will be missed creating greater panic and feelings of hopelessness.
This manipulation of impressionable minds is unforgivable.
‘Net zero’ by 2050 is blatantly unreachable.
Take one sector – cars. NZ born, Cambridge Professor Michael Kelly figures replacing all the United Kingdom’s 32 million light duty vehicles with next-generation EVs would require more than half the world’s annual production of copper; twice its annual cobalt; three quarters of its yearly lithium carbonate output; and nearly its entire annual production of neodymium. That’s way before you factor in the USA’s 300 million vehicles or the EU’s 240 million. That is without trucks, trains and other vehicles. It looks like a lot of people will be on bikes or staying home watching Netflix.
Having aided and abetted the Extinction Rebellion nonsense the catastrophic propounding scientists and their media lapdogs are now teasing the fearful with unobtainable goal setting. It is evil mind games.
Can we generate today’s electricity usage from current renewables or alternatives if we stop all fossil fuel use?
It has been calculated and, not yet disputed, that to do so would take:
• One average size nuclear power plant built and commissioned each and every day until 2050 or
• 4,000 typical sized wind turbines built each and every day plus the above nuclear back up for still days or
• 250 square kilometres of solar panels built and working each and every day plus the above nuclear back up for the cloudy days and night time.
It is generally reckoned that to allow for peak demand plus maintenance, breakages, load balancing etc we require 1.6 to 1.7 times average capacity so the above projects will need resizing up by 70%.
Even with some hitherto unknown technological breakthrough there isn’t a dog show of that happening. Goals set without a plan or a clue how to achieve them. Idiocy. More anxiety.
In NZ the youth suicide stats reveal 23% of our young people had significant depressive symptoms, up from 13% in 2012 – a damning indictment. In the USA suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people. A disturbing factor is that self harm numbers and suicide attempts among teenagers are growing and are 3 to 4 times higher than other age groups.
This is a case of “blood on their hands”, surely?