A is for Apocalypse. B is for Banana.

It turns out I have a milder form:

“Have you ever known someone who cited the Anthropocene in a dating profile? Who doled out carbon offset gift certificates at the holidays? Who sees new babies and immediately flashes to the approximately 15 tons of carbon emissions the average American emits per year? Who walks around shops thinking about where all the packaging ends up? You do now”.

The article goes all over the place, but here’s one takeaway:

“There is dismissiveness about whether individual choices like how we consume and transport ourselves matter: Why cancel that trip to Europe if it’s too late anyway and if everyone is still addicted to fossil fuels? But Lou Leonard, a founder of One Earth Sangha, a Buddhist group focused on the crisis, told me that living like climate change is real and that we can do something about it are signals to others — and can help shift cultural norms. Who would have thought Burger King would one day serve delicious plant-based meat?”

It also turns out that “eco-psychologist” is now an actual job:

“Zhiwa Woodbury, an eco-psychologist, believes that we are collectively experiencing climate trauma, of which we are both perpetrators and victims — our assault on the biosphere is an assault on ourselves. Altering habits like how we eat can make people feel more empowered and less overwhelmed, he said, and can shift our relationship with the natural world. After all, the belief that natural resources exist for our heedless exploitation got us to this point in the first place (and made us none the happier). “It makes us feel good that we’re doing something and it gets back to the idea of shared responsibility,” Mr. Woodbury said. “The idea that individuals are powerless only exists because we’ve made them feel powerless.”

We’re all in this together.

[Photo credit: Dark Labs/Unsplash]