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Some people are worried about their impact on the environment. Others are so choked about everyone else’s carbon footprint that they are paralysed with dread.
For some people, however, the terrifying prospects of rising CO2 levels, ice cap shrinkage, and yet another Live Earth concert are beyond any such gesture environmentalism. Indeed, a few become so neurotic as to be unable to function. Others experience symptoms such as bulimia, depression and alcoholism. Not only is there a new term for this new condition – "eco-anxiety" – there's a new kind of practitioner to save us from it, the "ecopsychologist".
A few folks have had themselves sterilised rather than bring another polluting consumer into the world.
Thirty-three-year old Jen Cohen (not her real name) isn't so much bothered by the genetic line as the product lines. Specifically, those in supermarket chiller cabinets. A few months ago, she suddenly found herself physically unable to enter her local supermarket. It had nothing to do with a wonky shopping trolley. "I simply found I couldn't go in," she explains. "I haven't been able to go near one of those places since. I was frozen and felt physically sick about the idea of all the pesticides used to produce the food, the massive waste involved in the production and packaging and the suffering of the animals, the cruel way they'd been reared. And all so that we can save a few pence."Aside from Tescophobia, other recorded cases include that of a 53-year-old landscape gardener who could longer wield his hoe because of worries over the weeds' welfare, a travelling salesman suddenly afraid to travel, lest his car exhaust cause somewhere low-lying, like Bexhill-on-Sea, to turn into Sea-on-Bexhill, and a recent spate of environmentally-conscious 4×4 burnings.
Clearly, there’s a fine line between intense concern for the environment and insanity.
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