Generation Z and Climate Anxiety
Image source: NBC News
The first time I felt climate anxiety was in my high school biology class, during the unit on overpopulation. My teacher was deep into an explanation of biological footprints, detailing that we would need more than five Earths if everyone followed the consumption pattern of an average American. To show us a visual representation, he pulled up the Census Bureau World Population Clock so that it filled the projector screen on one side of the classroom, bathing all our faces in a mute blue glow. He explained that the Population Clock was counting, in real time, the number of human beings on earth. As the numbers went up, an incessant marching band of little human icons expanded across the screen, and the typically rowdy classroom grew starkly quiet.
The second time I felt climate anxiety was in an environmental science class at Wesleyan, when the professor asked each student to anonymously submit one word describing how they felt about climate change. The next day, I walked into the classroom to find a big, bold, black “HOPELESS” scorched across the projector screen. This was the first word that came to mind for nearly all of us, and, as we shuffled into our seats, the quiet from that day in high school biology again filled the room.
A new mental health phenomenon, sometimes referred to as ‘climate anxiety,’ ‘eco-anxiety,’ or ‘climate depression’ has been developing among young people in the past decade. Adolescents and twenty-somethings around the world are grappling with the existential threat of climate catastrophe. Those struggling may experience panic attacks, loss of appetite, and difficulty sleeping, socializing, and focusing. According to a poll conducted in April 2022 by Blue Shield of California, 75% of Gen Z youth in the United States report having experienced a mental health problem like anxiety, depression, or excessive stress as a result of reading, seeing, or hearing news about climate change. The emotional reality of this moment is insurmountable, and kids are feeling it. Young people today are questioning whether they should have children in the face of an uncertain future.
In a discussion about eco-anxiety, Sophie Raiskin-Wood ’25 described a seventh-grade assignment she completed in her hometown of Eugene, Oregon. Her middle school was located within the Cascadia Subduction Zone––a tectonic plate boundary known for megathrust earthquakes, climate disasters with disastrous effects exacerbated by rising sea levels and climate change. To learn about geology, Sophie and her fellow 12-year-old classmates were instructed to study how each of their homes would be destroyed in an impending Cascadia earthquake.
“I think mine was a landslide, because my mom’s house was at the base of a hill,” she said. “But some people did projects on how they would get hit by tsunamis on the coast or crushed by rubble in urban areas. It was pretty dark.” When asked if that project changed her perspective on the climate crisis, she laughed. “I'm not really on team-human, you know?” she said. “We did this. So, like, if we wipe ourselves out, maybe it’s for the best.”
In an April 2022 interview with Yale Environment 360, Britt Wray, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Innovation in Global Health who recently authored a major survey of climate anxiety, was asked about her discovery that most young people agree with the statement “humanity is doomed.”
“It’s shameful that we have left young people with that kind of emotional reality,” Wray responded. “But I don’t think they’re overreacting. They are seeing things getting worse and harder. We have to look at the abject failure of our collective efforts to get our leaders to act on this.”
In her 10-nation survey, Britt Wray found that climate anxiety in young people is inextricably linked to their sense of being betrayed by governments and lied to by leaders. “Young people feel that older people have left the building, that they’ve checked out,” she says.
In 2018, The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that policymakers had only 12 years to avert the worst consequences of global warming. Today, the World Climate Clock in New York City is counting down the 7 years we have left, but fossil fuel emissions and global temperatures are still rising. For many, “HOPELESS” is still the right word. No matter how many protests we attend, how much we compost, or how many reusable straws we reuse, our fate feels sealed.
How many times have we been called the ‘climate generation’? What does it mean to grow up powerless, with that powerlessness thrown in our faces every time we open our phones? Or to map out the angle of the landslide that will wipe out our parents’ house? How do we live under the doctrine that it is our responsibility to save the world? This is the terrible root of the problem: the only surefire way to solve climate anxiety is to solve the climate crisis. We have no choice but to share that burden, and hold one another in accountability and solidarity while we do.
References
Beautiful Trouble and March For Science. “Climate Clock.” Accessed October 25, 2022. https://climateclock.world/.
Blue Shield of California. “New Poll Finds Climate Change Is Taking a Toll On Gen Z Mental
Health While Also Inspiring Youth to Take Action.” Blue Shield of California News Center, April 21, 2022. https://news.blueshieldca.com/2022/04/21/new-poll-finds-climate-change-is-taking-a-toll-on-gen-z-mental-health-while-also-inspiring-youth-to-take-action.
Dodds, Joseph. “The Psychology of Climate Anxiety.” BJPsych Bulletin 45, No. 4 (August
2021): 256. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2021.18.
Hickman, Caroline., Elizabeth Marks, Panu Pihkala, Susan Clayton, Eric Lewandowski, Elouise
Mayall, Britt Wray, Catriona Mellor, and Lise van Susteran. “Young People’s Voices on Climate Anxiety, Government Betrayal and Moral Injury: A Global Phenomenon.” The Lancet Planetary Health 5, No. 12 (December 2021): 863-873.McDonald, Charlotte. “How Many Earths Do We Need?” BBC, June 16, 2015. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712.
Lieberman, Bruce. “‘CSZ’–A Key Factor for Pacific Northwest Sea-Level Rise.” Yale Climate
Connections, July 26, 2012. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2012/07/cascadia-subduction-zone-a-key-factor-for-pacific-nw-sea-level-rise/.
Mooney, Chris and Brady Dennis. “The World Has Just Over a Decade To Get Climate Change
Under Control, U.N. Scientists Say.” The Washington Post, October 7, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/10/08/world-has-only-years-get-climate-change-under-control-un-scientists-say/.
Schiffman, Richard. “For Gen Z, Climate Change Is a Heavy Emotional Burden.” Yale
Environment 360, April 28, 2022. https://e360.yale.edu/features/for-gen-z-climate-change-is-a-heavy-emotional-burden.
https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3918955.
United States Census Bureau. “U.S. and World Population Clock.” Accessed
October 25, 2022. https://www.census.gov/popclock/.
United States Environmental Protection Agency. “Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data.”
Accessed October 25, 2022. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#:~:text=Since%201970%2C%20CO2%20emissions,been%20the%20second%2Dlargest%20contributors.