By George Bonanno and June Gruber, Photo: Getty Images Plus, Slate, February 9, 2022
As the new year approached, wildfires swept unexpectedly across suburban neighborhoods in Boulder County, Colorado. Nearly 1,000 homes were destroyed in a matter of hours. Climate change disasters are unsettlingly constant now, and as the Boulder fire demonstrated so poignantly, they can occur almost anywhere.
By themselves, climate disasters are worrisome enough, but they occur now amid the ongoing exhaustion of a global health pandemic, which has taken more than 5 million lives globally. Add to the mix festering political discord and simmering racial unrest and the combination is literally combustible. Not surprisingly, there has been widespread alarm about possible mental health costs.
Yet, despite such weighty burdens, the remarkable truth is that most people can manage these combined stresses and strains surprisingly well. In short, people are resilient.
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