Burning anxiety: The new normal isn’t just the fire, it’s the fear

Back in September, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the United Nations that the climate change debate was subjecting Australian children to “needless anxiety”.

Waking up in a country we no longer recognise is a shock to the psyche.

A few weeks later, Australia began to burn. It’s been burning for months, with no end in sight – an apocalypse from which entire communities will still be recovering, and feel hurt by, when sooner than later the nightmare will start over again.

If the fire chiefs and climate forecasters are correct – and common sense still means anything – we’ll burn again just as brightly and painfully over and over again. If not next year, the year after that.

Which is why the climate-consequence anxiety of our children isn’t needless after all. In fact it’s now a national trend. Because mummy and daddy are feeling it too. Who isn’t even a little afraid? Who doesn’t wonder where things will go from here?

Read the story from The New Daily by John Elder - “Burning anxiety: The new normal isn’t just the fire, it’s the fear.”