Climate Anxiety: How Eco-Stress Is Affecting Young People Globally

Shama Khanam

I fear I won’t live long enough to have children, not because of illness, but because I don’t know if there will be a world left to raise them in.”

– A 17-year-old girl from Delhi

The Invisible Weight of a Burning World which is unavoidable

The planet is heating, forests are burning, oceans are rising and so is the fear buried deep in the hearts of millions of young people. This fear, raw and unshakable, has a so called name: climate anxiety. It’s the silent grief of a generation watching their world unravel, knowing they will inherit its ashes, if right actions are not taken on time.

But unlike the visible devastation of melting glaciers or scorched earth, this crisis leaves no physical footprint and we think it doesn’t exist. It dwells within quiet, chronic, and agonizing. It creeps into classrooms, late-night conversations, dreams of tomorrow and for upcoming generation it is nightmare. And it’s not just a passing emotion; it’s a psychological crisis born from the collapse of ecological certainty.

This is not fear of the unknown. It is the dread of a future that science has already predicted and policy has continually failed to prevent.

Climate Anxiety: The Emotion that Makes Sense and create fear

Climate anxiety is not a disorder rather the reality which we ignore. It is the most reasonable response to a world that is collapsing in real time. Unlike traditional anxiety rooted in irrational fears, climate anxiety is anchored in evidence like data, reports, news cycles, and lived experience but still we prefer not to talk on this.

From the dense metropolises of São Paulo and Mumbai to the storm-battered islands of the Philippines and Fiji, young people are waking up to a truth their predecessors never had to carry so early: they may not outlive the damage already done.

In a 2021 Lancet survey of over 10,000 youth across 10 countries:

• 59% reported being extremely worried about climate change

• 75% of Indian youth and 81% of those in the Philippines expressed profound distress

• Nearly half said climate anxiety affects their daily functioning

They are not being dramatic rather being honest and showing the real picture to the world.

The Emotional Landscape of an Uncertain Future and human race need attention

The psychological impact of environmental collapse is multilayered and invisible . For many youth, it surfaces as:

• A loss of joy in simple things like rainfall or sunshine

• A hesitation to dream about children, careers, or homes

• A lingering guilt about personal choices, despite systemic failures

• Anger at previous generations and helplessness in the face of political inaction

Climate anxiety isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s a quiet withdrawal from conversations about the future. Sometimes it’s the decision not to have children. Sometimes it’s persistent insomnia fueled by doomsday scrolling. And often, it’s the silent, unspoken grief of witnessing extinction not just of species, but of innocence.

This grief is universal, but its weight is uneven. Those in the Global South feel the heat and hunger more intensely. Be it India, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Indonesia, the changing climate isn’t an abstract idea rather it’s a flood that swallowed their farm, a heatwave that killed a loved one, a drought that stole their schooling and compelled many parents to leave their children behind because they end their life. In the Global North, the fear often stems from anticipation. In the Global South, it stems from memory.

Intergenerational Betrayal: When the Adults Stop Listening then whom to share and blame

Perhaps the most painful part of climate anxiety is the sense of betrayal, a deep wound carved by those who were supposed to protect.

Youth around the world are watching governments subsidize fossil fuels while warning them to save water. They see corporations greenwashing destruction while activists are jailed. They witness political leaders make pledges in Paris and Glasgow, only to dig up more coal and concrete months later.

This emotional rupture is not just political it’s personal. It tells young people that their pain doesn’t matter. That their future is negotiable. That their planet is up for sale.

And within families, this generational gap often widens. Many teenagers and young adults find their concerns dismissed as ‘too sensitive’ or ‘too dramatic.’ In modern world where in some households, especially in traditional societies, talking about climate fear is seen as a luxury, something the privileged can afford. But in truth, climate anxiety knows no economic class, though poverty sharpens its edges. It did not categories people based on their class , caste, region etc.

Not Just Heat and Hurricanes,Mental Health Is Melting Too need attention.

The connection between environmental distress and mental health is undeniable. After natural disasters, depression, PTSD, and anxiety spikes. But even in the absence of acute events, the chronic fear of environmental doom corrodes mental wellbeing.

In urban settings, children grow up with air purifiers instead of playgrounds. In rural areas, youth watch crops fail and rivers vanish. Around the world, schoolchildren practice climate drills alongside fire drills. This is the new normal and the psychological cost is staggering.

Yet mental health systems are unprepared. Globally, fewer than 2% of national health budgets are dedicated to mental health. In countries like India, there are only 0.3 psychiatrists per 100,000 people. And even where support exists, climate grief is rarely acknowledged in therapy rooms.

How do you explain to a counselor that your sadness comes from watching a forest you’ve never seen burn on TV? How do you articulate the weight of knowing your adulthood might be spent navigating water wars or food shortages?

There is no pill for planetary mourning neither any short cut.

Coping in a World on Fire: From Paralysis to Purpose to save ourselves

Despite the despair, young people are not giving up and putting their every effort to raise voice, concern. Across continents, they are planting trees, leading climate strikes, writing laws, doing stage. Shows, making short films,suing governments, and building alternatives. Their activism is not just resistance it is therapy and their effort which lies on hope that one day everyone will take part in saving world.

Studies show that engaged youth especially those participating in climate action, they are less likely to suffer from paralyzing eco-anxiety. Action transforms fear into fuel. And one day their hope in reality. It provides agency in a world that otherwise feels uncontrollable.

Not only in India but in the whole world students are engaging themselves to invent news ideas to save the earth, students are designing low-cost water harvesters in India. youth climate leaders like Vanessa Nakate are reshaping the narrative around African climate justice in Uganda. In Europe and North America, Fridays for Future continues to shake political inertia. Around the world, indigenous youth are leading ecological restoration grounded in ancestral wisdom.

These acts do not erase fear but they give it direction. And that direction is survival.

Still, not every young person can march in protest or lobby a parliament. Some cope through poetry, painting, permaculture. Some through prayer. Some simply by surviving. And that, too, is resistance.

What Needs to Change: Beyond Hashtags and Headlines , now time to take action

If the emotional toll of climate change is to be taken seriously, we must go beyond empty promises and apocalyptic headlines.

1. Mental Health Must Go Green with support of government and society

• Train psychologists in eco-anxiety and grief counseling

• Create youth-friendly, climate-sensitive counseling spaces

• Integrate climate wellbeing into school and college health systems

2. Education Must Nourish Hope, Not Just Facts and rote learning

• Include climate literacy in all curricula not just science

• Foster emotional resilience, empathy, and interdependence

• Teach solutions alongside problems hope without denial

3. Media Must Balance Urgency With Dignity without any biased views

• Report the crisis, but also report the courage

• Avoid fear-mongering without context

• Amplify youth voices without tokenizing them

4. Governments Must Treat Climate as a Health Crisis and take active actions

• Recognize climate anxiety as a public health issue and create awareness

• Fund support programs for vulnerable youth to make their life a smooth.

• Involve youth in policymaking,not as symbols, but as stakeholders to take part actively

A New Kind of Hope- Tender, Fierce, and Real

Hope in the age of climate anxiety is not blind optimism rather a call to awaken half dead world and It is radical. It is stubborn. It is the act of planting trees under whose shade we may never sit.

And yet, climate anxiety is not the enemy. It is a form of love. To be afraid for the Earth is to care. To grieve its loss is to remain human. The danger lies not in feeling too much, but in feeling nothing at all.

The youth of today are not broken. They are awake. They are carrying the emotional temperature of the planet in their bones. Their fear is a compass. Their sorrow, sacred.

If the world is to be saved, it will not be through technology alone. It will be through tenderness. Through the fierce and fragile hearts of those who refuse to go numb while the Earth cries and shows its impact.

Final Words: Listen, Before It’s Too Late to act

We are running out of time. Not just for polar bears and coral reefs—but for the children growing up without certainty, without trust, without peace , without much hope and with lots of worries and question mark ❓

To address climate change without addressing the emotional and mental wreckage it leaves behind is to heal the body while ignoring the soul.