Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey

Abstract

Background Climate change has important implications for the health and futures of children and young people, yet they have little power to limit its harm, making them vulnerable to climate anxiety. This is the first large-scale investigation of climate anxiety in children and young people globally and its relationship with perceived government response. MethodsWe surveyed 10 000 children and young people (aged 16-25 years) in ten countries (Australia,

Toward a Taxonomy of Climate Emotions

“…It has characteristics of a narrative review: it delineates trends in what has been researched and what has not. A few existing, broad surveys of climate emotions are used as references to the existence of many of these climate emotions (especially Hyry, 2019;Hickman et al, 2021), but it was not possible in this research to evaluate the prevalence or statistics related to these emotions. It seems evident that there is some overlap between some of the words that researchers use.…”

“…In a Finnish national survey about climate emotions, powerlessness was recognized by 39% of the respondents and feeling paralyzed by 12% (Hyry, 2019). In a recent global study, 56% of the young respondents felt powerlessness and 51% helplessness in relation to climate change (Hickman et al, 2021).…”

“…Of this vast material, 14 studies which discuss at least five different climate emotions with at least some empirical support were chosen as major sources. These sources can be divided into two subgroups: first, peer-reviewed studies which discuss many different climate emotions on the basis of empirical observations (Ojala, 2012a;Cunsolo Willox et al, 2013;Kleres and Wettergren, 2017;Verlie, 2019;Hamilton, 2020;Jovarauskaite and Böhm, 2020;Martiskainen et al, 2020;Verlie et al, 2020;Hiser and Lynch, 2021), and second, published surveys which have explored self-reports of many climate emotions (Smith and Leiserowitz, 2014;Caillaud et al, 2019;Hyry, 2019;Minor et al, 2019;Hickman et al, 2021). Several of these studies were conducted either under environmental psychology or environmental education.…”

“…For example, in a Finnish national survey, 31% of Finns recognized some kind of climate fear in themselves, 25% self-recognized anxiety, and <10% recognized strong climate anxiety symptoms (Hyry, 2019). In a recent global survey about young people and climate change, 67% of the ten thousand respondents reported feeling climate fear and 62% climate anxiety of some kind (Hickman et al, 2021).…”

“…In a global study in 2021, 67% of the young respondents recognized feeling sad because of climate change and 42% grief. 39% reported "feeling depressed" (Hickman et al, 2021); this is presumably more like an emotion or mood than a strong state of depression, and further research is warranted to explore varieties of climate depression (see section Strong Anxiety, Depression, Despair below).…”