Climate change’s looming mental health crisis

FOR THE INUIT of Labrador in Canada, climate disaster has already arrived. These indigenous people form an intense bond with their land, hunting for food and fur. “People like to go out on the land to feel good,” says Noah Nochasak in the documentary Lament for the Land. “If they can’t go out on the land, travel a long ways to feel good, they don’t feel like people.”

Hopedale township on the Labrador Coast, capital
 of the Inuit autonomous area Nunatsiavut.

The Inuit’s lands, though, are warming twice as fast as the global average, imperiling the ice they rely on to travel. In the fall, hunters tend to get stuck in the community, because ice hasn’t fully formed up—and again, in the spring, when things are melting. Climate change is making these ice transition periods even longer.

Read the story from Wired by Matt Simon - “Climate change’s looming mental health crisis.”