Psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe is a pioneer in the field of climate psychology. In 2012, she edited
Engaging with Climate Change, in which sociologists, academics, and psychoanalysts offered diverse perspectives on the human response to climate change. Her latest book,
The Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis examines what she calls the “culture of uncare,” a system she argues “works to sever our felt caring links with the environment and with each other.” By examining the origins of the disavowal of the global climate crisis, Weintrobe hopes to spark discussion among readers of various backgrounds and remains hopeful that humankind can save itself.
She suggests that the last half-century has been beset by governments whose economies and political ideology have worked to deregulate the human mind so that it will fit better with economic progress–an unbalancing of the human mind in the service of economic gain. Weintrobe looks to literary inspiration for this unbalancing, specifically in Ayn Rand’s 1957 neoliberal celebration of Exceptionalism supporting the theory that “selfishness is admirable.” (Weintrobe, 2021). Protagonist Hank Rearden, a successful industrialist, is held up as the model for entrepreneurial grit: “I refuse to apologize for my ability–I refuse to apologize for my success–I refuse to apologize for my money,” he asserts. Weintrobe argues that people like Rearden are paranoid when it comes to sharing their hard-earned gains with workers. As such, these Hank Rearden types feel “unappreciated and resentful and go to extreme lengths to vilify anyone who may question either their wealth or ask for help.”
Bringing this back to the climate crisis, Weintrobe suggests that, like Rearden in
Atlas Shrugged, ultra-right-wing billionaires and conservative politicians will pull out all the stops and indulge in fantastic propaganda to prevent entities from enacting environmental policies that may result in diminished economic returns. This epic
denial extends to those hesitant to get the Covid-19 vaccine as well.
Despite the odds, Weintrobe sees light at the end of the dark tunnel. “People are reacting to climate reality in two main ways, trying to either avoid it or accept it (and mostly probably struggling between the two,)” she writes. The climate crisis is a collective trauma and eventually, we are all going to feel the consequences of it. Part of the healing process is to ask for forgiveness–of the earth, of those who have felt the crisis firsthand–and then, to work together to find solutions.
It is important to be positive about our chances, but we must also move quicker than we have. Species are disappearing and environments are becoming less hospitable to supporting life. We can enact change, but it must come soon. To that end, I offer a poem of regret by Carl Sandburg entitled “Buffalo Dusk” to remind us that once something’s gone, it’s merely a memory:
The buffaloes are gone.
And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk,
Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
And the buffaloes are gone.
Source: The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (Harcourt Brace Iovanovich Inc., 1970)
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