The next generation of leaders, those who will bear the full burden of rising temperatures, are increasingly terrified of climate change.
According to a recent international study, 56% of teenagers and young adults believe that humanity is doomed. While young people are right to feel concerned about our planet’s health, some climate activists’ alarmist rhetoric is creating a mental health crisis — and undermining our ability to solve the climate crisis. We must reject climate alarmism, and climate denialism, to beat climate change.
The survey was conducted across 10 developed and developing countries, including the United States. The findings highlight the intense anxiety young people feel about our warming planet, as well as the sense that they are being betrayed by their elders: 83% of respondents said we have failed to care for the planet, 64% said their government is lying about the real impact of climate policies, and nearly 40% said they are hesitant to have children due to climate change. Where does this fear come from?
If you listen to climate activists, as many young people do, it would seem that our planet is on the brink of catastrophe. Groups such as Extinction Rebellion have made a strategic calculation. In their minds, scaring the public into action is the only way to avoid an imminent climate apocalypse. They have no qualms about using shocking and disruptive tactics. For example, in 2019, Extinction Rebellion activists sprayed fake blood on the U.K.’s treasury building in London. Earlier this year, the group dumped wheelbarrows full of cow manure in front of the White House.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international organization tasked with compiling climate science and outlining potential climate change solutions, humanity should work to achieve global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in order to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celcius. Overshooting this target comes with real risks, including stronger hurricanes, sea-level rise, and increased drought. Yet even if we do not meet this target, nowhere in the scientific research does it say we are facing a future resembling Mad Max.
Scientists agree that limiting climate change through ambitious mitigation and adaptation policies, while no small task, is achievable. Humanity is certainly not “doomed.”
While Extinction Rebellion is on the extreme end of climate activism, many politicians, celebrities, and journalists have echoed its rhetoric. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez famously claimed in an interview that “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” Two years ago in an article titled, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” journalist David Wallace-Wells predicted that climate change would make our planet unlivable by the end of the century. Wallace-Wells’ premonition was heavily criticized by the scientific community, yet many other public figures have gotten away with, and have even been lauded for, unscientific climate-catastrophizing.
Some argue that, given the gravity of climate change, the ends justify the means. They’re wrong. Yet even if one believes that lying is morally justifiable, the effect of these lies on young people is deeply disturbing. “Eco-anxiety” and “climate depression” are rampant, with 57% of American teenagers saying that climate change makes them feel scared and 52% saying it makes them feel angry. Rather than educating and empowering the first generation confronting the effects of climate change, some climate activists have crippled them with fear and anxiety. By sowing unscientific fearmongering that reaps apathy, climate alarmism hastens the arrival of that which it claims to oppose most: a climate catastrophe.
So how do we educate young people about the threat of climate change without robbing them of hope? The answer starts with common sense. Teaching young children that our evil society is killing the planet is as inappropriate as showing them violent or sexual content. When they are of an age that they can grasp climate science and policy, teenagers should be provided with nuanced, fact-based information. Crucially, this information should not come with a political agenda or partisan messaging. Above all, young people should be taught that, as the science tells us, climate change is a serious but surmountable challenge.
This strategy will require even more than just equipping young people with facts and science. It will also require rejecting the false choice between climate alarmism’s nihilism and climate denial’s unfounded optimism.
To beat climate change, the world needs a generation of “tragic optimists.” The phrase, coined by psychologist Viktor Frankl, proposes that we should work to find meaning and purpose — despite life’s inevitable tragedies. Climate change does threaten our future. Governments around the world have failed to act. Future generations will face unprecedented ecological disasters. Nevertheless, young people must learn that creating a more sustainable future requires accepting these sobering realities — then getting to work.
The world needs a generation of innovative scientists, shrewd policymakers, and passionate conservationists. Next month, the United Nations will convene COP26, a massive climate change conference where leaders from around the world will discuss how to reduce emissions. Leaders attending COP26, and their successors, must remember that we do not need more activists who have succumbed to nihilism and attack our motivation to act. Until we beat the climate anxiety crisis, the fight against climate change is unwinnable.
Quill Robinson (@QuillRobinson) is the vice president of government affairs at the American Conservation Coalition.
