Psychiatric Views on the Daily News - Episode 224
To Address Climate Change, This Psychiatrist Goes Where No One Has Gone Before
November 28, 2022
H. Steven Moffic, MD
Psychiatry and inner space—closer than you think.
In my November 15, 2022, column, “I SCREAM for More Climate Action!” I bemoaned the slowness of society and psychiatry to help reduce climate change and instability. I asked for creative ways to obtain climate attention. I found one by serendipity.
While writing what became the column “A Day of Launching Dreams and Nightmares,” I had CNN on in the background. I was catching a bit about someone who was flying balloons around the earth to save fossil fuel. Then he was being interviewed and I stopped writing to listen. To my great surprise, he was also identified as a Swedish psychiatrist: Bertrand Piccard, MD. I had never heard of him.
The last name of Piccard may remind some of the 1980s TV series of “Star Trek—The Next Generation,” where Patrick Stewart played Captain Picard (with 1 c), with the slightly revised introductory phrase: “where no one has gone before.” The “Star Trek” use of the last name was in honor of the 3 generations of Piccards who have been renowned adventurers. In 1999, Bertrand made history with the first nonstop balloon flight around the world, topping that in 2016 when he did the same with a solar-powered airplane.
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/to-address-climate-change-this-psychiatrist-goes-where-no-one-has-gone-before
