What “dose” of anxiety is needed to awaken transformative action on climate change?

Climate change: a global emergency

The potential for climate change to undermine prosperity and development in so-called developing countries—the global South—has been recognised by advocates for decades.23 There is accumulating evidence that these warnings are not fear-mongering, and indeed may be too optimistic.4 Despite this, most governments in the global North act as though there is no emergency—as though growing concentrations of greenhouse gases and an ever-diminishing global carbon budget5 are a problem for future generations to solve. Governments in the global South, with a few exceptions, also act as though there is little that they can do.

It was once widely considered that “dangerous” climate change was many decades away, and that its arrival would be deferred, possibly indefinitely, by new technology, by carbon “offsets,” and by adaptation. However, the rate of increase in average global temperatures has recently accelerated, as has the annual increase in the concentration of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2). A 2024 pre-print reported “unprecedented weakening of land and ocean (carbon) sinks,” due in part to fires in Canada and drought in the Amazon.6 The Paris Agreement goal of restraining the average global temperature (when measured over a number of years) to no more than 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level is out of reach.

In parallel to these disturbing phenomena (together with profound biodiversity loss) young people are increasingly documented as reporting anxiety, variously called “eco,” “climatic,” or synonyms, including “ecological grief.”78 Neither the syndrome nor the terms are new—but the scale surely is.

Anxiety evolved in animals to help survival—to assist in the identification and thus response to threats before injury or death becomes inevitable. Widespread eco-anxiety—of which humans are conscious—can thus be conceptualised as hopeful—a response by the linked Earth-social system (the “eco-noösphere”) to attempt to create a negative (corrective) feedback, by which humans may avoid catastrophic damage to the life-support systems that underpin human wellbeing.910 To date, at least for us, this anxiety is clearly insufficient to result in meaningful change.

An increasing number of climate scientists, including some who have contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have been reported as expressing growing pessimism, some expecting to see “catastrophic changes in their lifetimes.”11 While some scientists have long recognised that an excessive stress on threat and damage can generate paralysis, a few also explicitly acknowledge that excessive optimism is harmful.810

Yet, to many, especially those with influence, environmental concerns, including from climate change, aren’t taken seriously enough.

Stoddard et al5 have described a “Davos cluster” by which multiple pathways converge to create a shared mentality in which the experience of loss and vulnerability of the poor, including as a result of climate change, is decoupled from the consciousness and concern of those who are more economically and political powerful. They further argue that the forces and resultant attitudes fostered by the Davos cluster serve to entrench and to deepen inequity, including of carbon emissions. The wealthiest 10% of the global population have been estimated as responsible for about half of the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, while the total emissions of the richest 1% account for more than twice the emissions of the poorest 50%.12 According to one analysis, the carbon dioxide footprint of the top consuming decile in the United States was almost 55 tonnes, more than 135 times that of people living on US$1.90 (purchasing power adjusted) or less per day.13 In turn this further undermines the social trust required for collective global action, strengthening the preference of elites for a status quo that is hostile to effective climate action, relying instead on postulated but so far elusive “technological rescue.”14

To date, there is virtually no evidence that governments (or the populations they represent) in the global North genuinely wish to support the global South, even though it is the North which has the power to choose. One example is the false promises associated with the distribution of covid vaccines.15 Another concerns climate leadership and lack of support to the global South, other than by unenforced and unenforceable promises.

Against this backdrop of climate injustice at the political level, we believe that anxiety experienced by many younger people about the climate is not only justified but encouraging. Even though awareness of danger is inherently painful, and risks burnout and alienation from the apparently unconcerned majority. The alternative—ignorance—is surely worse. Young people need to be anxious, but of course not to the point where their capacity for useful action is impaired.

We understand that the capacity of young people (and idealists of any age) to implement their visions for a fairer world, in which greenhouse gas emissions are static, if not falling, is limited. However, some people who are currently young will not only retain their idealism, but eventually acquire influence over policy. A mass movement, led by the young, but which also involved scientists16 eventually ended US involvement in the Vietnam War. Fridays for Future, the six year old climate movement launched by Greta Thunberg, is also led by young people and has been very successful in mobilising millions around the world, putting climate protection on the global political agenda and changing consumer behaviour in countries such as Germany where it is linked to citizens eating less meat and taking fewer flights.17 Furthermore, the movement has astutely shifted its focus to advocating for socially viable climate policies, a move consistent with Pihkala’s suggestion that climate activists frame their message as “hope in the midst of tragedy,”8 and ensuring its relevance and appeal to a widening audience in a post-pandemic politically turbulent era.

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