The Five Stages Of Grief In Reverse

Joe Romm has a good post about how the five stages of grief are reversed for people who care about climate change. The typical five stages are: 1. Denial 2. Anger 3. Bargaining 4. Depression 5. Acceptance But actually, climate science activists (a.k.a. climate hawks) experience THE FIVE STAGES IN REVERSE. Climate hawks begin with accepting the science. What else can one do? Science is the reason so many of us survived childbirth and childhood, science has fed the world, science is the reason computers and the blogosphere exist at all. And yes, science gave us our fossil-fueled wealth. I’m a scientist by training, but I just don’t see how anyone can pick and choose what science you’re going to believe and what not. The scientific method may not be always be perfect in single studies — since it is used by imperfect humans — but it is the best thing we have for objectively determining what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen. It is testable and self-correcting, unlike all other approaches. Once climate hawks accept the science, many quite naturally get depressed. The situation is beyond dire, and we aren’t doing bloody much about it, in large part because of the successful efforts of the deniers and delayers. Climate science offers a very grim prognosis if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path. After depression comes a serious effort at bargaining. Climate hawks try to figure out what they can do to stop the catastrophe. Taking actions and making bargains at a personal level and a political level — depending on their level of activism. Then comes anger. Once you’ve been at this for a while, you get very very frustrated by how little is happening — by the status quo media, the many anti-science politicians, and especially the deniers, the professional disinformers. Finally, you end up in a kind of denial. It just becomes impossible to believe that the human race is going to be so stupid. Indeed, my rational side finds it hard to believe that we’re going to avoid catastrophic global warming... -end of excerpt- Please note that I appreciate this article by reposting it, and I am trying to be nice to Joe Romm, even though he was not nice to Theda Skocpol. OK, let's be serious, he was a jerk. Oops, I forgot, I was trying be nice, sorry.