How to Turn Gen Z Climate Anxiety Into Action
Looking at natural disasters and extreme weather events, it’s clear that climate change presents a looming threat to humanity. For younger generations, these circumstances paint a bleak picture of their future, leading to dread and hopelessness — many call it climate anxiety. Thankfully, Gen Z can take action to improve their situation and provide for the planet.
Understanding Gen Z’s Climate Anxiety
Climate change is no distant boogeyman for Gen Z — it’s reality. Scientists have found that the 10 warmest years in recorded history occurred within the past decade. Young people are all too familiar with extreme weather events, rising temperatures, and species that are going extinct. Couple these events with government inaction and corporate greed, and it only makes sense that many are anxious and uncertain about their future.
Concern about the state of the world is a normal, empathetic response. However, human-induced climate change brings more than a passing worry. The term “climate anxiety” captures this intense dread perfectly.
A recent survey found that 80% of Gen Z Australians saw climate change as their primary environmental concern and felt anxious about it. Global online searches reflect this reality — Google revealed that those related to climate or eco-anxiety increased by 4,590% from 2018 to 2023. One of the most frequently searched questions was, “How to deal with climate anxiety?”
Simply put, climate anxiety is the distress people feel when thinking about the threat and scale of climate change. It’s an existential sense of doom, an awareness that the foundations of humanity’s existence are experiencing an ongoing collapse.
These feelings can affect people differently. For some, a bit of anxiety can nurture innovative thinking that encourages finding solutions to real-world problems. Climate anxiety can lead to someone joining environmental organizations and embracing their advocacies. However, this fear can paralyze others to the point that they avoid anything related to the issue, including taking action.
Turning Anxiety Into Action
While anxiety can lead to avoidance and defeatist attitudes, working toward a sustainable future requires challenging these views. Younger generations, including Gen Z and millennials, are considerably more active in addressing and discussing environmental issues online and offline.
Saving the environment requires significant effort. One crucial task to effectively advocate for climate justice is combating the paralysis and avoidance that come with eco-anxiety. Here’s how Gen Z can channel these worries into tangible action.
1. Find Time and Space to Grieve
It’s important to recognize climate anxiety as a real and valid emotional response to a world that’s falling apart. Some psychologists are already taking a trauma and adversity perspective toward dealing with these feelings, as experiencing ongoing climate change-related events can lead to cumulative trauma.
When dealing with fear or dread, it can help to give these feelings space. There is no pressure to force seeking silver linings where there may be none. It can help to grieve what the world may have lost to the climate catastrophe, as long as thoughts don’t stay there.
Finding moments of calm can help people process anxiety and give the mind and body some time to reset. Taking care of physical and mental health is crucial to avoid burnout—fighting for the environment also means caring for oneself.
2. Connect With Others
Climate change concerns the world, and any anxiety surrounding this issue often includes a fear of humanity’s fate. These feelings can be heavy burdens to bear. However, the collective nature of this fear means it can be shared.
People suffering from climate anxiety can find it helpful and relieving to share their worries with like-minded people. Participating in sustainability programs or joining environmental organizations can help like-minded people meet one another and provide support when needed.
3. Hold Governments and Businesses Accountable
Environmental crises and economic inequality plague the world, worsening each other’s effects.
Oxfam found that 125 billionaires emitted 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, over a million times more than the average emissions of one person in the bottom 90% of the population.
People in the poorest countries are experiencing the worst of the world’s climate catastrophes. At the same time, corporations continue to unabashedly pollute and decimate natural resources — tech manufacturers alone produce millions of tons of toxic waste each year.
While individual consumption and practices can affect the environment, it’s crucial to hold the rich and powerful, many of whom are the world’s biggest polluters, accountable. Shifting economic goals to prioritize sustainable development is critical to ensuring the planet doesn’t suffer further damage.
4. Focus on What Can Be Done
The world has suffered a lot of damage from human activities, some of which has been irreversible for thousands of years. It’s perfectly normal and necessary to grieve these losses. However, there are still many opportunities to make things better.
Instead of only focusing on death and destruction, it helps to spotlight progress, current efforts, and potential solutions. These conversations nurture hope and encourage action, both of which are necessary for humanity to survive on a healthy, livable planet. Taking action, whether through academic activities, community drives or protests, creates a productive channel through which people can address their climate anxiety.
From Despair to Hope
Climate change presents an existential threat to humanity, one that is incredibly clear and real for young people. While challenging, no person has to deal with these feelings alone. Fear, sadness, and anger are natural reactions to the planet’s destruction and can serve as motivation to do better and strive toward a sustainable future.
