Across the globe, more young people are expressing anger about climate change. And that, experts say, may not necessarily be a bad thing
From clickbait articles calling Gen Z lazy, all the way back to Aristotle, who said young people “high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life,” reactionary voices tend to undermine the advocacy of young voters due to their supposed inexperience of hard times. Yet, when it comes to climate change, hundreds of thousands of young people have made their beliefs clearly felt.
In 2018, 15-year-old schoolgirl Greta Thunberg sat outside the Swedish parliament, demanding climate action. Six years later, Thunberg’s solo protest has grown into a global youth movement, involving millions of young people from around 270 countries. She has inspired activists like Lance Lau, one of the most recognisable eco-warriors in Hong Kong, who organised his first climate protest when he was just aged 10.
In 2024, young people across the world are marching in the streets, launching school strikes, petitioning politicians and taking governments to court in a bid to get climate action. In Australia, for example, a student-run network made history with a 350,000-strong rally across the country in 2021, the largest climate mobilisation in Australia's history. The protesters ignored pleas from the government to stay in school, arguing that more action is needed to address the climate crisis.
As the window to curb global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius closes, more young people are getting angry about climate change. And researchers think that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Don't miss: Young climate activist Lance Lau on his mission to save the planet
Anger, fear and other emotions
At the conclusion of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in November 2021, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the resulting agreements a “compromise”, saying that they “take important steps, but unfortunately the collective political will was not enough to overcome some deep contradictions.” Greta Thunberg was more straightforward, calling it a failure.
People concerned about climate change often mention feeling angry or frustrated, which experts refer to as ‘climate anger’ or ‘eco-anger’. A 2022 study discovered that climate change evoked feelings of anger, shame, guilt and disappointment among its 530 respondents aged 16 to 24 in the UK. They felt guilty about their own contributions to climate change and were uncertain that their actions to combat it would have any significant effect.
Researchers in the US also reported an increase in climate anger among young people. Drawing from a survey of 20,000 respondents, they found younger generations felt greater anger because they felt their futures were at risk, blaming older generations for the crisis.
And then there is also ‘climate anxiety’. A survey of a thousand young people (aged 16 to 25) each in Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, the UK, and the USA found that, while young people across all countries were worried about climate change (59% were very or extremely worried and 84% were at least moderately worried), more respondents from the Philippines, India and Brazil reported feelings of fear and anxiety than respondents from Australia, UK and France. Heightened worry was lowest in the United States, where 46 percent of young people surveyed felt concerned about climate change.
