News-Record.com

Get this. A new vocabulary word for the climate change aware has popped up in recent news articles. "Carborexic" -- short for carbon or energy anorexic, describes people "obsessing over personal carbon emissions to an unhealthy degree, the way crash dieters watch the bathroom scale."

A quote from Australia's The Daily Telegraph:

Head of the University of Sydney Anxiety Disorders Clinic Dr. Mairwen Jones had seen an increase in patients suffering from climate change-related obsessive compulsive `checking' disorders.

She explained that some patients had begun checking their gas and power meters constantly to monitor their usage, while others worried about their petrol consumption and their car's odometer reading.

"A person who says: 'I constantly check the tap', now it's not that they're worried about a flood, but they say 'I don't want to waste water with elevated temperatures and drought, and I'm worried about my impact on the environment.''

Huh?

And The New York Times article says one man who might be carborexic drives his car on waste vegetable oil and has no heating or air conditioning units in his condo. Where does he live? Culver City, Calif., where the average highs reach 81 degrees and the lows 46 degrees, according to Weather.com. Yeah, he sounds like the poster child of irrational behavior.

It's possible there are people whose obsessive compulsive behaviors manifest themselves through energy-related actions, but I don't believe those examples were given in the stories cited. The National Institute of Mental Health defines obsessive compulsive disorder as "an anxiety disorder and is characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions). Repetitive behaviors such as handwashing, counting, checking, or cleaning are often performed with the hope of preventing obsessive thoughts or making them go away. Performing these so-called 'rituals,' however, provides only temporary relief, and not performing them markedly increases anxiety."

Now, I'm not a clinical psychiatrist or psychologist, but it seems to me that an example of energy-related OCD behavior is obsessing over a particular setting on the thermostat (i.e. setting it on only odd-digit numbers like 59 degrees or 61 degrees) or some other type of irrational behavior that has no inherent value. People experimenting with lifestyle changes brought about by environmental or energy concerns does not in and of itself signify mental illness.

By the way, you'll find a couple responses to the term "carborexic" here and here.

Now, let's be honest. Lifestyle changes or temporary experiments such as tracking your garbage for a year or eating a 100 Mile Diet, can be a source of conflict in the home if spouses and relatives don't agree. That's the case with any change or big decision, such as starting a business or moving in an in-law. Therapy might be needed in some cases. The difference here is in what's considered culturally accepted or mainstream.

But I think the articles missed an opportunity to generate discussion about the underlying cultural and economic changes occurring across the country. People frequently refer to the Great Depression when talking or writing about our current financial crisis. Let's not forget that during the depression people were quite obsessive about what they used and the money they spent. They had to be.

Even now, families experiencing financial difficulty are trying to figure out how to stretch their dollars and imbue with dignity sacrifices they have to make. I recently heard on an NPR program that one disabled women's funds are so tight that she has gone to eating only two meals a day. And if a family is energy/environmentally conscious and broke, they might be doing a host of things, including setting their thermostat as low as they can tolerate, using fans instead of AC, and reusing plastic bags. All of a sudden, frugal is back in style.

What do you think? Do you think energy obsession is becoming more of a problem? Do you see evidence of this among friends and family in the Triad?