It's time to reject state-sponsored climate fear mongering, says Mark Dolan

You might as well face it, you're addicted to doom. A new project has been launched, to address rising climate anxiety in students at the University of East Anglia.

Students in Norwich told BBC News they felt hopelessness, anger and despair about climate change and a new survey published this week found that 45% of UK students worry about climate change once a week or more. One student said that she’d experienced depression after being overwhelmed by the scale of problems facing the planet. And she sought therapy, after developing disordered eating, when trying to cut out food packaged with plastic.

Some youngsters are seeking therapy and are afraid to have kids. Well I had kittens, when I read this. There's an entire generation of terrified teenagers and tortured twenty-somethings, who think Kent will be underwater tomorrow afternoon. Let's hope that doesn't happen. That would ruin my trips to Whitstable.

Have you tried their oysters? Best in the world.

The more I look at the human race, the more I think we are unevolving. Homo sapiens have prevailed in the animal kingdom, have constructed ships that penetrate the high seas, and have built entire cities in the desert. We’ve found cures for disease, we’ve clothed, fed and educated ourselves, crafted weapons, sent a man to the moon, and I can send a photo to my Auntie Patsy in California, that will arrive on her smartphone, in less than a second. And we’ve been a hardy bunch too, withstanding natural disaster, disease and war.

War is an unfortunate, but immutable characteristic of humanity. It turns out we fight each other, and we always will. And look what our British and Allied heroes went through, in the first and second world wars. Trench battles, and brave soldiers running into no mans land, to face almost certain death, against an unforgiving and unstoppable German war machine. 17-year-old boys took to the skies in Spitfire aeroplanes, with no certainty that they would come back. At times, the statistics suggested they wouldn't. Seven decades on, and our current generation of youngsters lie awake at night, worrying about problems that don't even exist yet.

That’s when they’re not worrying about pronouns, or which comedian or top author to cancel next. Now I'm concerned about rising temperatures, and I think we have a great opportunity, including economically, to go green. But we can’t do it on our own and this climate hysteria is scientifically debatable, and deeply counter-productive. But young people have been brainwashed at school and university, and on mainstream media, that Armageddon is around the corner. But does this not have, a familiar ring to you?

What about this deadly pandemic, that was going to kill everyone, but which turned out to be very nasty and dangerous for some, but which was mild or non-existent for most. I fully understand why older and more vulnerable people still wish to take protections, distancing, wearing a face covering – it’s my view that the data doesn’t back it up, but hey, it’s a free country.

But when I watch children and young people, wandering around in masks outside, at the tail end of a pandemic, and with omicron, the latest variant, being milder than the gags in Last Of The Summer Wine, my heart sinks. Why the hell, have so many young people, been terrified of Covid? Because they, like the rest of us, have been subjected to two years of propaganda.

The propagation of fear has been government policy, all craftily executed, by those terrifying, ideological fanatics at the so-called behavioural nudge groups. Like Communist party member and covid zealot Dr Susan Mitchie.

Covid posed almost no statistical threat to these young people, but the template of fear was established. There are stories of toddlers and young children in the US screaming and bursting into tears, when relatives or school teachers now remove a face mask. Well done everyone. And now this template of fear and culture of catastrophising, has been transferred to the climate. Sure, let's recycle, let's not waste energy – it’s expensive enough as it is.

And let's decarbonise, as long as it's in national interest and doesn't unduly impact the economy. But I'll be honest with you folks, if America, China, India, Brazil and others, don't change their ways, then our efforts will be a complete waste of time. We will be done for anyway. I don't think that will happen.

The instinct for self preservation is deeply embedded in the human psyche. If the threat of global warming grows, all nations will be united around a common enemy. And I've got no doubt, we will innovate and deploy our colossal resources, to handle the situation. But whatever happens, it's time to end the fear-mongering. Whether it's climate change, Covid, or even nuclear war with this monster, Vladimir Putin.

He wants to make us afraid too. But you know as well as I do, that the only thing we really have to fear is fear itself.

And if young people, who are the future of our society, who are the future of humanity, spend their lives terrified about the future, then we're all doomed. I've got some breaking news for you. Life is dangerous, it always has been and it always will.

Given the fact that we used to kill each other with spears, and given that back in the day a fever, a toothache or an infected finger could be a death sentence, we’ve actually never been safer. We’ve never had it so good. And the nuclear deterrent, means that there is still no logical, strategic advantage in one country nuking another. It's all sabre rattling from Mr Putin, who seeks to scare the bejeezus out of us. Something Hitler tried to do, but the fearless Winston Churchill wasn't having any of it. And the rest is history.

I'm afraid we're all going to go one day.

So whilst we're here, let's live a little shall we? Let's have some fun. Let's be courageous, let's be bold, and let's understand that peril, risk and danger are not something to be afraid of. They are the very essence of life itself. That life is hard, unpredictable and suffused with risk, is what makes it worth living.

Cowering in front of your TV screen, being fed propaganda and waiting for the apocalypse, isn't living at all and will likely hasten our departure. We’ll all die of anxiety. It's time to reject state-sponsored fear mongering.

We’ve seen it with Covid and climate is next. And it's time for this snowflake generation, to man up, to woman up and grow a pair of balls.

Do you want to be a passenger in life or in the driving seat? Shit happens folks.

Life is difficult and it always has been. And that's why it's so great.