16/09/2021

(BBC) Climate Change: Young People Very Worried - Survey

BBC -  Roger Harrabin

Over half of those surveyed said they thought humanity was doomed and that governments were failing to respond adequately. Image source Getty Images
A new global survey illustrates the depth of anxiety many young people are feeling about climate change.

Nearly 60% of young people approached said they felt very worried or extremely worried.

More than 45% of those questioned said feelings about the climate affected their daily lives.

Three-quarters of them said they thought the future was frightening. Over half (56%) say they think humanity is doomed.

Two-thirds reported feeling sad, afraid and anxious. Many felt fear, anger, despair, grief and shame - as well as hope.

One 16-year-old said: "It's different for young people - for us, the destruction of the planet is personal."

The survey across 10 countries was led by Bath University in collaboration with five universities. It's funded by the campaign and research group Avaaz. It claims to be the biggest of its kind, with responses from 10,000 people aged between 16 and 25.

Many of those questioned perceive that they have no future, that humanity is doomed, and that governments are failing to respond adequately.

Many feel betrayed, ignored and abandoned by politicians and adults.

The authors say the young are confused by governments' failure to act. They say environmental fears are "profoundly affecting huge numbers of young people".

Chronic stress over climate change, they maintain, is increasing the risk of mental and physical problems. And if severe weather events worsen, mental health impacts will follow.

The report says young people are especially affected by climate fears because they are developing psychologically, socially and physically.

Meet the people taking climate change action

The lead author, Caroline Hickman from Bath University, told BBC News: "This shows eco-anxiety is not just for environmental destruction alone, but inextricably linked to government inaction on climate change.

"The young feel abandoned and betrayed by governments.

"We're not just measuring how they feel, but what they think. Four out of 10 are hesitant to have children.

"Governments need to listen to the science and not pathologise young people who feel anxious."

The authors of the report, to be published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health, say levels of anxiety appear to be greatest in nations where government climate policies are considered weakest.

There was most concern in the global south. The most worried rich nation was Portugal, which has seen repeated wildfires.

Tom Burke from the think tank e3g told BBC News: "It's rational for young people to be anxious. They're not just reading about climate change in the media - they're watching it unfold in front of their own eyes."
I don't want to die, but I don't want to live in a world that doesn't care for children and animals
Young person answering survey
The authors believe the failure of governments on climate change may be defined as cruelty under human rights legislation. Six young people are already taking the Portuguese government to court to argue this case.

The survey was carried out by the data analytics firm Kantar in the UK, Finland, France, the US, Australia, Portugal, Brazil, India, the Philippines and Nigeria. It's under peer review on open access.

Young people were asked their views on the following statements:
  • People have failed to care for the planet: 83% agreed globally, UK 80%
  • The future is frightening: 75%, UK 72%
  • Governments are failing young people: 65%, UK 65%
  • Governments can be trusted: 31%, UK 28%
The researchers said they were moved by the scale of distress. One young person said: "I don't want to die, but I don't want to live in a world that doesn't care for children and animals."

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(Vice) 56 Percent Of Young People Think Humanity Is Doomed

Vice - Sophia Smith Galer

A major study of 10,000 young people across 10 different countries lays bare the scale of climate crisis-related anxiety felt around the world.

Children play on melting ice at the village of Napakiak on the Yukon Delta in Alaska, in April 2019. Photo: MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images
Lichen, an 18-year-old living in Hawaii, used to worry about the end of the world, but lately that doesn’t feel all that distant. Now, they’re simply worried about what’s next. And it’s a worry that is affecting nearly half of the world’s young people.

According to what its authors say is the world’s largest ever study into young people’s fears about the climate crisis, 45 percent of 16-25-year-olds said climate-related anxiety and distress is affecting their daily lives and ability to function normally.

Almost 60 percent of the 10,000 young people surveyed across 10 countries attributed this to their national governments, who they said were “betraying” them and future generations through their inaction.

Fifty-six percent of people surveyed said they agreed with the statement that humanity is doomed, while 75 percent said they believed the future was frightening.

The study, published today in Lancet Planetary Health and led by academics and professionals at the University of Bath, Stanford Medicine Centre for Innovation in Global Health, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and others, found that people from countries more directly and immediately impacted by climate change tended to be more worried about the future.

Ninety-two percent of young people in the Philippines said they felt like the future was frightening, compared to just 56 percent in Finland. 

But young people in the UK and the U.S. had less faith in their governments than countries like Nigeria and India. Only 28 percent and 21 percent of young Brits and Americans thought the government could be trusted when it came to the planet – whereas 51 percent of Indians had faith in the authorities. 

The report’s authors say that climate anxiety is an “inescapable stressor,” and that unpredictable and extreme weather patterns are likely to further add to psychological distress.

For Lichen, watching the wildfires in their father’s native Australia was “really scary”, and that when they were younger left them feeling a kind of “raw fear.” 

“I’d just zone out something thinking about it,” they told VICE World News via Instagram. Now, they want to pursue environmental journalism – action that they say makes them feel better. 
A volunteer rests as flames rise from a wildfire in Mugla province in Turkey last month. YASIN AKGUL/AFP via Getty Images
But for Malika, a 15-year-old from Lebanon, climate anxiety has exacerbated her mental health problems. She remembers contracting a virus as a child from swimming in one of Lebanon’s polluted rivers; it’s one of many memories she recalls as she thinks about the anxiety disorder diagnosis that she received last year, and how much worrying about the planet is part of it.

She feels like the school projects on climate change that she is doing aren’t enough. “I felt like I’m doing something just very small, I don’t have that influence in the world,” she told VICE World News via Instagram. “So I was always and I’m still anxious about what’s going to happen in this world. Are we going to die of climate change? After we die, will people suffer?”

The co-lead author on the study, Caroline Hickman from the University of Bath, said: “Our children’s anxiety is a completely rational reaction given the inadequate responses to climate change they are seeing from governments. What more do governments need to hear to take action?”

Some politicians are trying to address climate anxiety directly, on top of actual climate action. Last month, Coalition MPs asked the Australian Prime Minister to fund climate change chaplains in schools.
But posts on social media suggest young people aren’t necessarily always identifying what they’re experiencing as climate anxiety.

In the Global North, young people from Portugal were the most worried out of the countries surveyed, having experienced a dramatic increase in wildfires since 2017, but just looking at Instagram alone, there are few Portuguese-language posts on the topic; #ecoansiedade only has around 100 posts and #ansiedadeclimatica even fewer. #Ecoanxiety in English only stands at 14,000 posts itself, which seems small when #anxiety stands at 18 million. 

On TikTok, however, #climateanxiety has 370,000 views. Alaina Wood, a TikTok creator and sustainability scientist, says she is worried about content she sees on the app, particularly the trend of spreading climate nihilism to the TikTok sounds of Bo Burnham's dystopian Inside film.

“Young people have seen this climate nihilism videos and believe it is too late to do anything about the climate crisis, so they often decide to stop pushing for climate action,” Wood said. “I’ve made numerous videos discussing climate anxiety and debunking climate nihilism, and I receive daily comments thanking me for putting a name – climate anxiety – to how they feel.” 

So what could be signs of climate anxiety? Megan Kennedy-Woodward and Dr Patrick Kennedy-Williams are the co-founders of Climate Psychologists, an organisation that provides psychological support and communication tactics for those committed to saving the planet. “Climate and eco anxiety blanket over a wide range of emotions that the climate crisis can provoke,” Kennedy-Woodward said. “Guilt, anger, grief, despair.” 

Kennedy-Williams added: “It can result in social withdrawal, sleep or concentration issues, to name a few. Clinically speaking, for younger children we aim to support parents to have meaningful and productive conversations with their kids.” 

Kennedy-Woodward recommends that young people lean into self-care, and take social media and climate information breaks when necessary, to alleviate climate anxiety. If you are feeling like it is too much, she advises speaking with a healthcare professional. 

But the authors of the study are eager for governments to realise the impact that their lack of climate action is having on young people, rather than expecting young people to handle it alone.

“Public discourse should encourage the expression of feelings that 60% of young people in this survey have described as being ignored or dismissed,” wrote the study’s authors. “We argue that the failure of governments to adequately reduce, prevent, or mitigate climate change is contributing to psychological distress, moral injury and injustice.”

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(AU Canberra Times) AMA And Medical Colleges Write To PM To Warn Of Climate Health Risk

Canberra Times - Harley Dennett

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison with AMA President Dr Omar Khorshid. Picture: Getty Images

As world leaders gear up to meet in Glasgow in November for the UN climate summit billed as the most significant since the 2015 Paris Agreement, doctors have penned an open letter to Australia's Prime Minister warning he must lift the nation's commitment to the global effort to save lives and protect health.

The open letter, signed by the Australian Medical Association, Doctors for the Environment Australia and 10 medical colleges, calls on Scott Morrison to commit to science-based targets for cutting Australia's emissions this decade.

"As doctors, we understand the imminent health threats posed by climate change and have seen them already emerge in Australia," the letter states.

"The 2019-2020 bushfire season in Australia saw parts of the country afflicted by the poorest air quality in the world, with large numbers of the population enduring weeks of bushfire smoke and the related adverse health impacts. That climate disaster also tragically took more than 30 lives as a direct result of the fires.

"Since then, we have seen the stark impacts of extreme weather events playing out in the northern hemisphere in 2021. Flooding, fires and heatwaves not only have immediate health risks, but also come with the longer-term physical, economic and mental impacts of displacement, loss of life and loss of livelihoods."

They called for policies that accelerate the transition to renewable energy and acknowledge its health benefits, and plan to increase Australia's commitments to the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

Doctors for the Environment Australia chair John Van Der Kallen said doctors were already dealing with the reality of climate change in their surgeries and in emergency departments.

"Failure to act urgently on climate change risks unmanageable threats to the health of all Australians," Dr Van Der Kallen said.

AMA president Dr Omar Khorshid said, "the government must urgently act to significantly reduce emissions this decade. Severe fires, superstorms and floods have arrived and are destroying lives".

The organisation's ACT branch is also rolling out a campaign urging patients to speak to their GP about managing their health in response to rising temperatures and increasing natural disasters.

It comes in the wake of the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which found that without "immediate, rapid and large-scale" cuts to record high levels of greenhouse gas emissions then hopes of containing global warming to even 2 degrees would be "beyond reach".

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