#4 The Yin and Yang of Climate Crisis: Chinese Medicine Understanding of Science: Global Yin Deficient Heat, Part 1

I would say one way that we can understand from a Chinese medical view, what’s happening with the climate is an increase of cool– an increase of warmth and a decrease of coolant. So warmth in Chinese medicine is yang and coolant is yin. So as I described before, the planet is warming. There’s no real debate about that but the ability of the planet to hold greenhouse gases at bay has gone down. So what that is, is an increase of Yang an increase of coolant and a decrease of yin. Excuse me, an increase of yang an increase of warmth and a decrease of yin, a decrease of coolant. So that’s important– I think that’s an important discussion because in Chinese medicine if we have an understanding of what’s going on, then it is possible that we can address it. And in the treatment room for example, what that is called is a differential diagnosis where we’re trying to differentiate what’s causing symptoms. And the way I look at climate change, the way I write about climate change in my book is from that point of a differential diagnosis that rather than just talking about climate change as an increase of heat and a decrease of coolant which is accurate, if we can understand what that means in Chinese medicine then we have the potential to create the cultural remedies to address the condition.

Another way of saying that is it’s not enough to just know the planet is warming, that’s not in depth enough, that’s not nuanced enough. But just as in the treatment room where in China for Chinese medical practitioners, there’s many different ways to address symptoms of all kind. I think on a cultural scale, on a climate scale, there’s many different ways that we could potentially address climate change. So the increase of heat and the decrease of coolant is an increase of yang and then decrease yin. So the diagnosis for that is in yin deficient heat. So yin deficient heat means that the heat is occurring, the increase in yang is occurring because the yin the coolant has gone down. So that’s very important because again in my opinion if we understand the diagnosis we have the opportunity to treat it. And not all forms of heat for example are treated the same way in the treatment room and I don’t think all forms of heat should be treated the same way ecologically with climate or with cultural issues that are creating climate change. So my assessment, my diagnosis of climate change is yin deficient heat.

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