Welcome to the stream im femi oke a Global Climate emergency is are falling fast and its taking a toll on some Peoples Mental Health as we start an entire week to the covering climate now initiative we look at a condition known as climate. What are the symptoms stay with us to find out. Seems like every day brings headlines about catastrophic events tied to Climate Change whether it is storms arctic ice melt or rising sea levels and the impact of Climate Change is a challenge for Mental Health professionals who are now seeing patients with a whole range of illnesses people in communities directly affected by ecological changes are at risk of posttraumatic stress and depression but even those whose lives have not yet been profoundly altered by Climate Change events they feel deeply about the future for humankind for more we are joined from the costa rican capital san jose by christiana forget as she is founder of Global Optimism a movement dedicated to environmental change she was the executive secretary of the United NationsFramework Convention on Climate Change. Director at the Labrador Institute of Memorial University and has researched Climate Change impacts on the health of indigenous communities shes in sydney in the canadian province of nova scotia after the fijian capital were joined by joseph. Hes a pacific organizer at 350 dot org thats based Environmental Movement hello climate worry. As it is so good to have a hit on the strain let me start with some young people that we met at the climate strike in washington d. C. Last friday and that is when the young climate activists got a 2 book was in front of the white house and we spoke to young people about their levels of climate. This is what they told us. I think a lot of what Climate Change in society is for me exists and what gretta stands for on the idea of like we dont have a future so why am i going to school if theres nothing to prepare for the thing im most scared about is like when i have kids or their kids what is their welcome the fact is my world is pretty nice how i like how it is obvious that you have to change and i just want my concert thats where i do tend to try to think of things you variously so when were talking about Climate Change i tell myself oh i want to worry about this because you know will it survive Climate Change anyway and we start laughing but the truth of it is so terrifying that right after i make that remark i started to realize it all over again. Christiane i guess this idea of being terrified by app attentional future cristiana what would you even say to those young people. Well those young people help me and thank you for having all 3 of us on today going to see how people are actually speaking what i have been feeling for decades ive worked on Climate Change for over 30 years believe it or not and ive been known to be such a crybaby about this i have been known to cry in public in front of the cameras and friend of microphones because this really is easy credibly sad the even justice that is being done here from generation to generation has absolutely no words it is unbelievable what my generation is doing to the next generation now it is very important to realize 2 things one is 1st were all incredibly grateful that the young people are on the streets but my generation cannot put the responsibility a look at least beginning to change the course of what were doing your own admissions that is our responsibility that is not the responsibility of young people we need to do that and the young people will have to finish the job but that is not a responsibility i really get very irate when i hear people my age say oh thank god the old people are going to same not that is our responsibility not to be put on the shoulders of young people and the 2nd is im very much honor and i share and have shared for decades away before these kids were born in the grief around Climate Change and we cannot afford to be paralyzed by that grief and by that despair we have to move on or that agree on a despair get into mourning and use the energy of that anger in that sadness to transform the world that we are going to create that we have job creation we cannot stay in the hole we have to peek out of the hole. And make sure that we transform well you in that hole because every some people who pay his thing to this program i think one quite understand this idea of climate khalif kind of anxiety but you live in a part of the world where Climate Change is happening to you as we speak can you explain that for us coming grief and exile it is something that we know all too well in the pacific and we also know that in grieving and in mourning we can start the healing process and thats something weve always advocated for laughs is such a big thing when you think about disposition of your land and losing everything that we can make that you and i young people through this very much and when you add to that conversation of the Climate Crisis and how the pacific has call as contributed practically nothing to the causes of this that disproportionate suffer you face and then when we face it the harshness of the effects really has a big impact on the way our young people are but we know and we empower them to understand that through morning we can begin the healing process and through taking action like these constructs that are happening this weekend they can stand up for themselves and feel like they are doing something in tribute to the to the changes that we need to be especially here in the pacific show so for those that who are not familiar with the changes in the pacific do you want to just be a little bit more detail about what youre talking about what is the loss what is the grief i mean the biggest and most visible thing is the rising sea levels and maybe the best way to highlight this is over the last couple of weeks they have being a student organizing across the world are for the climate strikes which are happening this weekend in kid abbas a couple weeks ago or. One of the highest king titles. We should do to be hitting the island and watched all the kids across the world were preparing for the climate strike they couldnt get a bus for rebuilding this he was hired because this king tide came in at about 3 meters high when. Where i live its hard and. When you talk about the grief there its basically their home disappearing underneath the rising sea level so they are losing their. I want to share this with you this is from rob norm rubber law is an environmentalist where he works on the environment and he when we asked him about the idea of grieving in climate anxiety because its the kind of new terms low cristiana says shes been experiencing for a very long time shes ahead of most of us rob says of course its impossible to be aware of the Climate Crisis and not experience grief and anxiety can you explain some of the symptoms because i think sometimes people are experiencing these symptoms and have no idea that they are doing so. Yes so crime and anxiety and climate grief are something that were learning more and more about the research is burgeoning its expanding were starting to hear from people all over the world who are either at the front lines of a changing climate like were hearing from joseph people who are experiencing slower changes people who have experienced an acute thing like a hurricane or a wildfire and essentially what it is is a form of anxiety or Mental Health response that is related to a change in the environment or the ecosystem in which youre in and the anxiety can take all different forms including grief and loss and mourning and certainly about something that were hearing about a lot is the ways in which people are ill in pain and suffering watching their homelands change or watching biodiversity switch and watching just cultural continuity change for people who are deeply connected to the environment actually you out on a cold Greenlandic Perspectives on Climate Change you are looking into areas of the wild where Climate Change is actually happening what is that doing to the local population what is that doing to their livelihood so when they are depending on a 3 g. 8 environment and that environment is warming and moving a woman what happens to those people have them in new chews in the stream i need. To just pass out some. Peanuts keep it up. And because now you can get it. From the mountain. To this buddies up money shes a shes a national to key in my wedding and. My this in my eyes and. Mine and jeans and shook me up and. Actually you work on that project you are very familiar with that you can even hear the voice of how how down it just sounds depressed as you can see that people have left people out there anymore Climate Change is causing climate migration as well. And it certainly ties into work ive been doing within unit in northern labrador for the past 12 years and were seeing resonance all across the north in terms of people just feeling that pain as their homelands changes see a ships as plants and animals change as ability to feed your family alters and as people are responding to generations of connection to land and that land is changing the the pain that people feel is very large and very real and what we argue is that its actually a very normal response to what were seeing in Climate Change christiane you talked about the whole and peeking out of the high i want to see that via my laptop here Global Optimism which is the organization that you work with outrage plus optimism so weve heard or read a bill up a really good case for why people should be grieving and why they have anxiety and then you want to turn that on its head and use that anxiety to actually help people take action whats one of them is just a little genius in the decades that ive been working on Climate Change i have never seen as mad outrage as there is now and that is a very good thing because our what we continue to do we havent even started to begin to reduce emissions we havent even started were still increasing emissions despite the fact that science is incontrovertibly this by the fact that we have so much pain so much loss so much destruction we havent even started the descent of emissions sort of corridors outraged and that is a very good thing that we have that out but as i said before we ought to be able to balance that with nations now will be in reined in of be. Deep conviction that we can transform this it is going to be sadly too late for some people but it doesnt have to be too late for everyone we have to be able to turn this around now what is interesting is when you think about natural disasters or local natural disasters lets think about a hurricane as think about a cycler even a terrorist attack those are disasters that happen in specific localities and our human reaction to that is usually one of solidarity because those that are most affected need the help and the support from those that have not been as affected and you see people in these situations in these emergency situations coming around in circles of love and support and sharing bowed in and helping to give each others belongings out you can do each other out that is the kind of human solidarity a lot of reaction that we need up cross the globe not just for an acute emergency in one specific area but for the climate this is no longer in acute emergency this is a chronic emerges and we haue to be able to dig in and grind out the solidarity that we do once in a while it is going to have to be descendant that is actually predominant on this planet. Show them and show you this this is gabrielle and she says on twitter in Climate Change education initiatives we are experiencing a shift in the out of the Money Mission to sit concentrate not only on providing knowledge about Climate Change of Climate Action and behavioral change but also fostering positive emotions such as hope and joy yet what are you using as a tool and to strategize. I mean this is something thats always been central to our work as specific climate warriors and that comes from the main reason that the narrative around the pacific and climate in this Climate Crisis has always been that we have the demise of climate variant and that can bring a lot of anxiety and depression to up people so one thing weve always worked very hard to do is to shift that narrative elementary is we are not drowning we are flexing because we want to rise and we want to empower from within our people to know that we can take action in these places and a lot of our work. Differently now culture and not understanding in an Indigenous Culture and we know that the answers to the Climate Crisis and the answers to what we need to build more Resilient Community we can find already within our culture and i think zax what we need to be doing within this community and theres definitely something in there about are the solidarity and this big Global Climate action thats happening this week speaks to that or a lot of people might question the things that are happening at the moment but to see the world standing in solidarity for this moment on Climate Change and building that community of solidarity is exactly what we need to be doing right now in order to make the changes in this world actually as were chatting were getting feedback in from view as gene taurus im just looking at who he is hes a father of 2 loving husband fine by many u. S. Navy veteran and a proud filipino this is what he says parents like myself are seriously affected by the impacts of Climate Change felt around the wealth not knowing if our children will still have a well to enjoy how would you counsel gene. But i think gene is not alone i think many of us including myself are raising Young Children right now are worried about what it means but i also think if you go back to a christan and joseph are talking about we cant give in to despair so we have to talk to our kids and our children in our youth about how these feelings are normal and how they can move forward in a way thats positive and support and solidarity and one thing that i always say to people when they ask how do we deal with this pain how do we deal with the suffering is its. Its actually a privilege an honor to grieve something because we only grieve what we love and we only grieve what we lose thats important to us so if we are grieving it means its a privilege and an honor that we have to respond to you and thats the same with teaching our children how to grieve its teaching them how to not hide from it or become debilitated by it its starting those positive productive conversations that are focused on that Global Solidarity and also the local and regional solidarity so we have the support networks for ourselves for youth for all generations to see and i and said that you have to be diplomatic because you need to get everybody on board tape you cant afford to point fingers but im wondering. Elisa well it is and as communities are grieving but the politicians are not. Well i think even that is changing and in to that question i would put politicians and seals of large corporations or of Financial Institutions on all of those that are making the Big Decisions that are really determining the course of the Global Economy and i think those leaders thought leaders and Decision Makers are beginning to be touched theyre beginning to be touched 1st by their own children i cant tell you how many people at those levels have come to me recently in the past 23 months to say my 16 year old daughter or my or levon year old son told me that i need to be more responsible they want to be proud of their father or of their mother to be you need to be touched by their children which is a very good thing but they are also beginning to be touched by the outrage on the streets the masses of people and were going to be having massive strikes on friday on the 20th and under 27. 00 and everybody should join us strikes wherever you are because that will be global and that social intolerance that license to operate that is now being removed from my generation is one that is new orleans these people to make the right decisions that question so were moving in the right direction that the question for me is speed are we doing this at the speed that we need and sadly the answer to that question is no. I have to give this one tea this is what is the answer and then coming live as theyre watching here is anderson says until Climate Change really affects those in the developed world nothing will be done joe candid honest reaction to that. I agree sometimes a differently within this region our closest neighbors here. Surely one thing that we do far is that one thing that we do know working in this region is that if they were still in your fix as much as we are then they would be doing a bit more about are now in australia theyre forming the bush fires that are becoming more and more common and you see the actions started to change and i see exactly is the case with a lot of the western world is that they dont have this understand what it is to live on with 4 months of Climate Change so that changes just so were just waiting for them to make these changes but i do pfleger i want to share this with you this is from a guardian article the rope was like an opinion piece from up north and i showed you his tweet a little bit earlier on that i have felt hopelessness of the Climate Change here is how we move past the end meant screen if i may rob suggest this to us work out how you can tackle Climate Change in your work every job is a climate job potentially if you like dentists and accountants and engineer actually what is your take away weve weve booking for the griefer wetly for the anxiety what can we do. But i couldnt agree more with rob i mean i think all of us are responsible in some way and we all have to find the avenues in which we can support and make change and we can advocate for this and we can continue to bring the emotions into the climate just question its not a technocratic discussion its not a science only and we have to unite the human impacts the Human Emotions so these are the opportunities where we have to come together and to start making that change at or at our local level in our jobs in our profession but also in sharing our stories and in telling the stories of being at the front lines are experiencing acute change or experiencing slowing and cumulative change of telling the stories of the places you love the pain that youre feeling in those last and what we can do about it it takes everyone so i completely agree no matter what we do or. Who we are we all have to come together in this idea of Global Solidarity i guess i have a challenge for you this is from attire on twitter providing more news on progress and covering more incredible Climate Action stories who wants to volunteer a positive Climate Action story for us to talk about grief anxiety whos going to bring their positive story. Well i can i can give you a little heads up without mentioning the names because it allows them to say. But we will have Pretty Amazing sized scale big scale corporations that will be announced already this week in a way we can advance of the Climate Summit how they are already on 100 Percent Renewable Energy how they are moving very fast to climbing tragedy we will have other corporations coming out saying actually the Paris Agreement requires everyone to be climate neutral by 20 getting were going to do it before but we will have quite a bit of what it has a group of Financial Institutions that are coming out saying we totally understand the science and we want to wind with the science and were going to be aligning our pretty fully with the 1. 5 degrees warming as being the maps along the i mean i put in a huge amount of pressure on themselves to perform because they understand frankly that yes this is the common good but its also in their own interests if the National Interest is in the interest of cities is in the interest of corporations its in the interest of Financial Institutions and thats the big phemie that i dont think we have done a good job explaining we always come at this from the global need the Global Responsibility all of which is true and not undermining that at all because otherwise it would have 35 years of my like and but also there is a huge opportunity here to have cities that are so much more livable just much better efficiency transportation and less transportation to have much Better Energy independence the Pacific Islands are the best example they are 0 emitters they do not emit anything most of them have already committed to learning over it 100 Percent Renewable Energy now that is an impressive role modeling actually size that these specific items are doing why because. In their own good because otherwise they are not to spend huge amounts of money importing the stupid fossil fuels which by the time you get them out of the Pacific Islands are very expensive not just because of the fuel but because of the transport to get there so it doesnt make any sense when these glorious irons have all of that solar energy and wind energy right over them so just a small example of we have to be able to turn this around and understand yes theres responsibility yes theres an emergency yes or surprises yes there is all of that totally true and at the same time let us please wake up to this Incredible Opportunity honestly. Joe your anxiety levels will climb anxiety levels on a scale of one to 11 is you know suzanne 10 is what the hell. And maybe it goes from 1. 00 to 10. 00 on a daily on a daily basis change and we as a writer remember depending on whats happening for us though mostly it just goes from day to day theres a flu something you know that christiane i was talking about one of the things i do always focus on will never own feeling anxious about our the credit crisis or crumbling is the amazing work thats coming out of the pacific theyre leading up into this big massive good location thats happening recently just so our we are all sold out there one on 101 run 100 percent ok well ill show that it wouldnt be our job for your anxiety whether its one or 10 you continue to smile thank you for bringing your perspective to us here on the stream thank you christiane i thank you ashley as well really appreciate you kicking off of every 1st episode and covering climate now now on the next episode of the stream we will look at an epic project thats poncing a huge barrier of treaties from the west to the east coast of africa to actually hold back the sun hala desi it is and the indonesians idea and its called the great green bay and its a subject to the value documentary join us tomorrow as we continue our special series of conversations tied to the covering climate now initiative until then take a. Aljazeera for me is different because theres a maturity about his views and the is really genuine the other also hes charming but the bad side the risk of a story are going to go over the top of the note going on in a culture 0 is setting up a good place to do the reality on the ground that other males will grow the only combat the get the message to the people thats what we do nothing thats what we do well. There is a huge group of people at work behind our screens and the power they have is so massive that urge to keep swiping through a twitter feed thats just not the way we all click i agree to the terms and conditions thats just so most of us never even give it a 2nd thought and actually thats design is what ali rakes floors how designers are manipulated and the final episode all hail the algorithm. In an ordinary week dr event atar at the heart of the only functioning hospital in town in North Eastern south sudan and his steam operate on around 60 patients the United NationsRefugee Agency nominated him for the prestigious nansen award which you won in recognition of his work and incredibly difficult to constances. South sudan has been in conflict since 2013 the war has divided the country along ethnic lines 200000 people most of them refugees from sudans Blue Nile State even this remote town and looked to be a bad hospital for all their medical needs. Destroyed almost the infrastructure. In the. Almost one way including my little was obstructed in the process of you know vision of the mother to walk into the city that theyre supposed to. Were going to find out who definitively did it 1st donald trump believes iran was responsible for an attack on a Saudi Oil Refinery but says the u. S. Will respond only when it has proof. Of this is live from doha also coming up. Israelis begin voting in a 2nd general election in less than 6 months with Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu has political future hanging in the balance. We are holding their 1st session next week hong kongs