CLOSING ESSAY

I’m So Tired Of Being Green

One recent poll showed that American consumers are increasingly unlikely to spend money on energy-efficient goods and services.

By Susan H. Greenberg | NEWSWEEK

July 7-14, 2008 issue

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Posted By: Zsazsa01 @ 09/20/2008 10:03:37 PM

Comment: OMG - I have a degree in Environmental Science and I'm done. I've done it all. I don't see anything they tell me to do that will save the planet that I'm not already doing and I'm over it. Send the hangers back to the dry cleaners or drive across town to recycle the AA batteries. There is an entire planet of people that isn't doing anything and they keep asking us to do more. Al Gore - take this green and shove it! Go ahead and burn up all the lights in your mansion. Sheryl Crow - use all the toilet paper you want. I'm going to laugh my way all the way past the recycling center!!! I'm not going to put my country through this work when no one else cares.
Posted By: Sarah Edwards @ 06/30/2008 3:07:23 PM

Comment: Point of clarification. Ecopsychology is a field of study with roots reaching back to the time of the ancient Greeks and beyond into prehistory. It focuses on the relationship between nature and our mental and physical health. It became recognized as an established branch of psychology in the late 20th century and is being applied by a variety to professionals in a wide variety of settings to address issues from learning disabilities and surgical recovery to urban planning and psychological problems such as addiction, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, and, yes, anxiety ,of all kinds.
Ecopsychology can be a useful choice for addressing eco-anxiety because it focuses directly on reconnecting with innate, natural ways of understanding ourselves and our relationship with others and the environment.
If one would like to know more about this field I would recommend reading Ecopsychology, an anthology edited by Theodore Roszak, Mary Gomes and Allen D. Kanner. Or Children and Nature by Peter H. Kahn, Jr. and Stephen R. Kellert. Both provide an overview of the research done in this field. For a more popularized summary see Last Child in the Woods by journalist Richard Louv.
Sarah Anne Edwards, LCSW, PhD