Youth protesters in Seattle were part of a global Climate Strike calling for local and national leaders to do more to address climate change on September 20, 2019. It didn’t surprise 20-year-old Sena Wazer when I told her Wednesday about a new poll showing a majority of young people in the United States feel such anxiety about climate change that it affects their daily lives. The poll on sustainability, social justice , climate change and the role of higher education by Sacred Heart University, showed 55 percent of Americans ages 15 to 29 agreed “strongly” or “somewhat” with the statement, “I experience ‘eco-anxiety.'” That means, as the poll worded it, “my level of concern for climate change causes psychological distress that impacts my daily life.” A much higher 82 percent agreed strongly or somewhat with the comment, “I am worried about the impacts of climate change on future generations” — raising the question of whether the other 18 percent have been sleeping for the last two decades. A majority of young people feeling psychological distress over climate change? That surprised me as a Baby Boomer. Turns out, the trend has been building for years. A 2021 study in the British medical journal Lancet showed 45 percent of young people worldwide, and 26 percent in the United States, felt eco-anxiety. The Sacred Heart poll did not explore how young people’s anxiety unfolds but that’s subject of a growing body of research. Just last week, Inside Climate News produced an article, citing the Lancet study, titled, “How to Talk to Anxious Children About Climate Change.” For Wazer, a climate activist and graduate student at the Yale School of the Environment, the distress rings true. “As someone who works in this space, I spend a lot of time with people who are […]
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