Thread by @SteB777

This is media gaslighting. If students are suffering from "eco/climate-anxiety", it's not because there is anything wrong with these students, but because we live in an insane world where our leadership is refusing to address the crisis.
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bbc.co.uk/news/science-e…

By coincidence, I started my degree in ecology in 1992, in the direct aftermath of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, but had been environmentally aware for over 20 years. At the start of my degree a seminar was held about addressing the crisis.
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The chair of the panel, probably the world's leading expert on air pollution at the time, stood up, and said, now we understand what the problem is, we can set about solving it.
independent.co.uk/arts-entertain…
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I was left scratching my head at the presentation, which was based on the bizarre premise, which seemed to assume that the climate and ecological crisis had only just been discovered, and no one knew about it before.
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That the only reason why we'd not previously done anything to address what could best be referred to as the sustainability crisis, was that no one knew about it before. Which left me scratching my head as to what the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment was about.
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Don't take my word for it, go read the 1972 Action Plan yourself, available to download on the page linked to below. Here is the declaration in full.
un.org/en/conferences…
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That's pretty clear cut isn't it, the world's leaders first pledged to address the ecological crisis in 1972, and they didn't just learn about it then. So pretending to have only just learned about the action we needed to take in 1992 as if it were a new discovery was bizarre.
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In 1983, so alarmed was the UN by the complete failure to take any action at all on the 1972 Action Plan, that they set up the World Commission on Environment and Development (better known as the Brundtland Commission), to look into it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brundtlan…
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In 1987, the Brundtland Commission delivered it's report, Our Common Future, which made clear and repeated reference to the climate crisis (climatic change as it was known then). This formed the basis to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.
sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/docume…
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Unlike the other students present, I was aware of all of this, having been environmentally aware before the 1972 UN Environment Conference and was familiar with all these reports and what they said i.e. we needed to take urgent action to address this.
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So to hear it presented in 1992 as a new discovery was utterly bizarre, because the reason no action was taken was not because the discovery of this problem was new, because it was well known in the late 1960s.
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So anyway, I stood up as a fresher, feeling something of an imposter addressing these "experts" and said, we can't keep saying we've just discovered the problem, because that is what they were saying 20 years ago, and that wasn't even true back then.
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At first, Professor Alan Wellburn started arguing with me and I was interested to know what strategy the academics had for politicians just promising to address the crisis, and then doing nothing, as they had done previously.
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However, I had all the answers, because I was so familiar with the facts, I could just quote was said and pledged when. Then to my utter surprise, Alan Wellburn just slumped back in his seat, and said I was probably right.
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I felt utterly helpless. If leading academic experts on global panels had no answer to political leaders promising action and then doing absolutely nothing, than what chance did ordinary people have.
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Let's revisit what the UN Secretary General said a few weeks ago, about our political leadership being liars, about how they promised action, and then did nothing i.e. "a litany of broken promises".

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Remember, the UN Secretary General was saying this 30 years after I attended that seminar, and 50 years after the clearly declaration of the 1972 UN Conference I present here.
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Self-evidently the anxieties of these students aren't irrational now, they are real. We are heading for global suicide, and yet all our leaders are obsessed about is profit and economic growth, the cause of the problem.
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Yet, the best the BBC can come up with is that these students must come up with a way of not thinking about the crisis we face. This is why I call it blatant gaslighting i.e. if you're worried about the situation, then there is something wrong with you.
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The problem is obvious. A small elite, we will call it the 1% (although in reality it is both bigger and smaller) is doing so well out of causing the climate and ecological emergency i.e. profiting from it, wealth, status etc, that they don't want to change direction.
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It would have been quite possible for our leaders to start addressing and averting this crisis 50 years ago, 30 years ago. However, it would have meant the wealthiest people in society giving up their obscene wealth and consumption and their dreams of getting even richer.
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So what our so called leaders have done, is just to keep kicking the can down the road, to leave the action and difficult decisions to a future generations of leaders to deal with.
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What have our leaders done in response to taking no action for 50 years. They have come up with a new plan called "Net Zero by 2050" i.e. we will do something in 30 years time.
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Whereas experts not in denial like Professor Kevin Anderson @KevinClimate point out that Net Zero by 2050 is a scam, and will not achieve what it claims it will achieve.

https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1519447708196552705

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The question is not why are these students experiencing "eco/climate anxiety", but why is there not a wider demand for action immediately. Self-evidently, the BBC just wan't everyone to live in a state of blissful denial and ignorance, along with the rest of the media.
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It has now become transparent, that the media sees its role as gaslighting society into carrying on with business as usual, and to mislead society into committing global suicide by ecocide. Am I fucking angry, you bet I am.
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I'm sorry for sounding like a broken record and saying the same thing over and over again. But what else can I say. It is perfectly possible to address our crisis. The only reason we aren't are because of the lying leadership we have, the media, the billionaires, the CEOs etc.

@ClimateHuman @GeorgeMonbiot @GretaThunberg @JKSteinberger @DoctorVive @ClimateBen @ECOWARRIORSS

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