Going through my teenage years was hell. I had all the outward appearances of someone who was happy and healthy. I had a sports car, nice clothes, a few cool friends, and even a little money to throw around.
But inside my fancy car, I was experiencing crippling depression. I was going through the motions of daily life, not understanding there was anything wrong. I thought everyone experienced depression. But I was having nightmares; I was drinking frequently. I couldn’t seem to maintain any kind of friendships or relationships.
I like to think I was in a perfect storm of stress. In my second year of grade twelve, a close friend died by suicide. I was fighting all the time with my dad, who was a heavy drinker, and I was experiencing the pressure of working a night shift job that came with a lot of backstabbing and office politics. On top of it, I was trying to finish high school. All these things came together, and I slowly started to slip into psychosis. Soon, I would literally go raving mad and have to be taken to the psychiatric hospital.
Anosognosia
Despite all these problems, including developing delusional thinking and hallucinations, I didn’t see that there was anything wrong with me. The condition of not understanding you have an illness is known as anosognosia. I didn’t believe I had an illness, so when I left the hospital, I stopped taking my medications, leading to disaster.
As wildfire smoke engulfed Edmonton, I documented just exactly how wrong I was
I now see how anosognosia applies on a mass scale. Our planet is dying, climate crises are increasing year by year. Hurricanes have become more powerful, mass sheets of ice are melting and separating from both poles. Weather has become more violent; winters have become shorter and heat waves more frequent. And insufficient action among the whole population seems to be leading us to even worse disaster.
As I read books and watch videos on YouTube, the ignorance I can see among the media and the public is astounding. They spend hours talking about the personal failings of one presidential candidate or another while ignoring the big questions, like which politician will do the most to reverse climate change.
When the crisis comes home
As a child, I recall staring out the window of one of my classrooms. We lived across an alley from the school, and I could see our home through the window of my class. I thought to myself that all the things I hear about – the threat of nuclear war, the looming climate crisis, horrible crimes that I saw on the news – none of these would really affect me, my family, or the city I lived in. Last year, as wildfire smoke engulfed Edmonton, I documented just exactly how wrong I was as a kid – how the problem was coming right to our front door.
As a child, until I was around twenty, I had an acute fear of nuclear war. I also felt horrible deep down about our natural environment slowly giving way to development, while in other parts of the world wars were taking hundreds of thousands of lives. My eventual solution to this grief was to join the Air Cadets. It started out being about good citizenship and personal development. I took some courses in public speaking, and another in first aid. But it wasn’t until I took a summer course called Air Crew Survival that I became obsessed with not being a victim of the things going on around me.
Coping strategies
That two-week course taught us everything about surviving a plane crash or disaster. I saw this education as a way to cope with the knowledge that, one day, the missiles would come. Many people use similar coping strategies to ease their worries about the dangerous direction our world is taking. They read magazine articles. They recycle. They buy electric cars. These small things help, but what we need is massive change from everyone, and solid leadership not just from our leaders, but from all concerned citizens.
“Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.”
We are in denial of a devastating problem, and it will lead to horrible outcomes. It is estimated that by 2050, the average world temperature will rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius. This will raise the level of the oceans, cause major floods, storms, unbearable heat waves, and massive melting of the polar ice caps, and initiate irreversible damage.
The gravity of the situation with the environment and how we respond to it has become a major controversy, despite scientists all over the world agreeing that in the near future, human life as we know it could end. Climate deniers are spurred on by misinformation, such as false claims on social media that there has been no actual global warming. Others see the problems, feel the problems, understand the problems. But just as I was in denial of my mental illness and couldn’t properly deal with it until I had fully accepted it, so much more public awareness is needs to happen.
Some believe science will soon find a clever way to reverse global warming; others are so ignorant they welcome global warming, thinking shorter winters and longer summers are a benefit to their lives. It all reminds me so much of my years of living in denial.
Survival mode
My Air Crew Survival course taught me how to put myself in a survival mode when needed and gave me real, practical ways to deal with just about any problem that came my way. I was given not only strict instructions on what to prioritize when I was in an emergency, but detailed training on things like broken bones and other injuries.
We need to bring this problem right into our homes.
Soon, the climate crisis will plunge billions of people into a dire situation that will be irreversible. Survival training could be beneficial when the situation worsens, but the best wisdom I can offer people is what my commanding officer always said in Air Crew Survival: “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.”
The public needs to be educated and to take part in solutions. Many people see global warming as a problem for leaders or a problem for activists, or even a problem that doesn’t exist. We need to bring this problem right into our homes.
During the time I was coming to terms with my mental illness, I was starting a lifelong journey of recovery. I never fully realized my need for medications and consultations with a therapist and a psychiatrist at first, just as vast numbers of people don’t feel a personal need to do their part in finding a solution to climate change.
Fortunately, my anosognosia didn’t last forever. Once I came to understand something had gone desperately wrong with my mental state, and that accepting help could restore me to sanity, my illness took a whole new direction. I was able to work, able to write books, able to make a change.
Everyone who wants a future for generations to come should be voting for and supporting candidates who can articulate ambitious, detailed, and practical policies to deliver change. We all need to seek out information we can trust and educate ourselves. This means acting against the daunting enemy of denial.
Mass delusion is a difficult enemy to conquer. It starts with influencing where we place our votes and donations, but it doesn’t end there. One of my personal causes is to convince people to grow food rather than grass in their yards, in combination with composting as much waste as they can to fertilize the garden. A small step, but an achievable one. Hopefully after people take small steps, they will be more likely to accept the need to take larger ones.
Ignorance, anosognosia, and denial can be conquered, I just hope we can conquer them before the climate situation is completely out of control and irreversible.
Leif Gregersen is an Edmonton-based writer, teacher, and public speaker who has written 12 books. https://edmontonwriter.wordpress.com
