Discussion Have you witnessed the impact of climate change in your surroundings over the years? Has it made you more depressed?

[NoPoint2Life]

Where I live, it's warmer winters with less snow. Hotter summers with more severe storms.
The thing that makes me depressed is there are so many instances I see on the news of a tornado or a hurricane completely wiping out an area. Within a day or two they talk about rebuilding and I just want to throw things at the TV because I am thinking why bother it's just going to happen again!

 

[Apathy79]

It's hard to say. I had bushfires destroy my home recently so you'd assume I've felt it more than most. Left me homeless for a decent period, during which time I got to focus on some recycling, clean water and clean air initiatives which I felt were beneficial. I've always liked helping out the environment and those have been key pillars to that.

But on the climate side, I discovered bushfires have ravaged similar areas for basically all time. I've become more sceptical about it in recent years - I feel like for a long time I attributed every extreme weather event to climate change because the news talked about it and most people I know talked about it, and now I see it more as just what weather has always been like and now we have a label for it to justify moral outrage, which works for politicians and sells papers and tv spots. I figure better to let the people addicted to the outrage, or gaining extraordinary power and/or wealth through its propagation have fun with the labels and related academic manipulation, and I'll go back to focusing on what's real to me like recycling, keeping the air and water clean. Fortunately it overlaps with the climate crew sometimes so we get along on a few projects without having to agree about that one. And I find a stack of people my age and especially older are coming to similar realisations.

I also like fitting into that medium of wanting to do my bit for the environment but not getting pulled into the climate protests, so I don't seem to get on anyone's bad side, in an issue which bizarrely seems to divide others to the point of never even talking to each other again.