Imagine you’re eight years old. Your Grade 3 class puts on a musical about the environment, with the refrain “reduce, reuse, recycle.” You’re taught that this motto, about doing your small part for the environment, will help the planet.
Both your elementary and high school environments stress the importance of recycling, using public transportation and reducing the amount of meat you eat every week. You follow these rules, believing what your school and local government have taught you about environmentalism.
Ten years later, scientists announce that if governments and large corporations don’t make drastic changes, climate change will reduce the planet to an uninhabitable space.
All over social media, you see posts about how your clothing releases tiny microfibres into the ocean; that your plastics aren’t actually recycled, and are more likely thrown in landfills or shipped to developing countries; that whatever you use or buy is contributing to even more climate change and environmental pollution.
Your prime minister approves the purchase of a pipeline, despite promising he’d veto it upon election. Everywhere you turn, the message is that your future is up to the decisions of mega-corporations and government leaders.
Is it a wonder that more and more young people have climate anxiety?
Over the last decade, scientists’ warnings have become increasingly more urgent. First came the warning that if global carbon emissions continued at the same rate, within 10 years the Earth’s temperature would rise two degrees, which would have destructive ramifications for the climate.
Despite the fact only 100 companies are responsible for 71 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, social media activism started to focus on the many changes individuals can do to their current lifestyle, to become more ethical and environmentally friendly.
New products and brands are marketed as alternatives to environmentally dangerous products—such as plastic—creating a market which capitalizes on our climate anxiety.
For a lot of us, the classic existential dread that exists as a young person now manifests as climate anxiety. Humour is often used as a coping mechanism against it. Memes about it exist as a way to vent frustration with the previous generations, corporations and governments that allowed this to happen.
I use climate change humour and jokes to cover up the extreme climate anxiety that I experience. While I already have moderate anxiety, the discussion surrounding climate change has increasingly worsened my anxiety.
Thoughts about whether or not the individual products I buy will impact the environment informs every single purchase I make. Making decisions or thinking about the future particularly impacts me, as I genuinely feel that I won’t have a future worth thinking about.
I know that I’m not alone in this line of thinking. The thousands of students that have marched in #FridaysForFuture, who have signed pledges to not have children until governments take climate change seriously and are suing the U.S. government, are the ones taking head-on action.
Our generation has been informed of climate change awareness for a long time, and the climate anxiety produced by this is leading to protests and demands for change. The only thing that will alleviate the rise of climate anxiety is radical change. Whether or not mega-corporations and governments will listen is another story.
File photo.
