‘Demanding that the New Zealand Government further mutilate the New Zealand economy in the name of climate science won’t help the planet,” huffs David Seymour in an opinion piece in the NZ Herald in response to the School Strike for Climate. “What will help … is science and technology that allows the poorest people in the world to feed themselves without large emissions.”
It’s a slightly rambling piece, touching on mental health, science education, local truancy and poverty (in other countries, not here). But I come not to bury Seymour but to praise him. If a little lukewarmly.
I wholeheartedly endorse his call for youngsters to “learn the best maths, science, technology and business you can”, though I’m not quite sure how business fits in. I’d be a little more wholehearted if the government of which he is a part wasn’t slashing science funding.
I also disagree with his reasoning for why young’uns should be learning STEM – to “be equipped to solve the [climate change] problem”. Um, who made this problem? Governments and previous generations, many of them driven by the money-making imperatives of commerce.
Seymour is un-virtue signalling to his constituency. According to our pre-election survey of 5000 people, the only people less likely than Act supporters to believe in anthropogenic climate change are Winston Peters’ followers. But Act supporters “win” outright on eco-anxiety – they are the least likely to worry about climate change and the environment.
This is where mental health comes in. Seymour refers to the “sinister side to the school strike movement” – that “capricious” grown-ups have driven an epidemic of mental distress by frightening children with notions of a coming apocalypse. Regarding “capricious”, David, in the words of The Princess Bride’s Inigo Montoya, I do not think it means what you think it means. Scientists have been talking about climate change since the 80s.
In the scholarship around climate and eco-anxiety and mental health, researchers have repeatedly made the point that, unlike some forms of mental distress, climate and eco-anxiety are reasonable responses to the challenge we’re experiencing. We’re just over a year past the devastating floods in Hawke’s Bay, and our news feeds have been filled with scenes of washouts and flooding on the West Coast. Why mightn’t people be concerned about climate change, or believe that it’s happening, in the face of such footage?
Not to mention the findings from the science that Seymour values so highly. Sometimes, what we believe is not founded as solidly on evidence as some may think – we retrofit our view of the world to help us avoid feeling uncomfortable. Cognitive dissonance, it’s called.
Which brings me to the last point I’ll make. I agree that education is a fantastic privilege to have, and one that not everyone in the world has access to. Seymour is right that, just as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would predict, the poorest people in the world are more focused on avoiding starvation than environmental politics. Political sociologist Ronald Inglehart has argued that the fact that environmental politics is even a thing in the West is because our standard of living has improved to the point where we can turn our minds to more “post-materialist” goals, like protecting the environment.
Children living in absolute poverty may not be striking for climate, but I bet more of them would if they had three meals a day. The results of our survey show that worrying about being able to pay for basic things like food and electricity is a pretty good predictor of mental distress.
I think these student strikers are learning something. They’re learning about civic participation, about collective action and, really importantly, they’re doing something. Doing something has long been a prescription for better mental health.
