Government inaction on climate change linked to psychological distress in young people

University of Bath Press Release

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BATH

Nearly half of global youth surveyed (45%) say climate anxiety and distress is affecting their daily lives and functioning – according to results from the largest scientific study into climate anxiety in children and young people, according to recent research.

The inaugural study, based on surveys with 10,000 children and young people (16-25) across 10 countries, found 75% of young respondents believe ‘the future is frightening’ – jumping to 81% of youth surveyed in Portugal and 92% in the Philippines.

It found, for the first time, that climate distress and anxiety is significantly related to perceived government inaction and associated feelings of betrayal. 58% of children and young people surveyed said governments were “betraying me and/or future generations,” while 64% said their governments are not doing enough to avoid a climate catastrophe.

The study finds widespread psychological distress among children and young people globally and warns ‘such high levels of distress, functional impact and feelings of betrayal will negatively affect the mental health of children and young people.’ Experts warn that because continued government inaction on climate change is psychologically damaging, it potentially amounts to a violation of international human rights law.

Caroline Hickman, from the University of Bath, Climate Psychology Alliance and co-lead author on the study said: “This study paints a horrific picture of widespread climate anxiety in our children and young people. It suggests for the first time that high levels of psychological distress in youth is linked to government inaction.  

“Our children’s anxiety is a completely rational reaction given the inadequate responses to climate change they are seeing from governments. Children and young people are now mobilising around the world and taking governments to court; arguing that failure to act on climate change violates their human rights. This study makes an important contribution to these legal arguments, framing climate anxiety and distress as a ‘moral injury’.”

Co-lead, Dr Liz Marks, from the University of Bath’s Department of Psychology added: “This study shows us how many young people around the world feel betrayed by those who should be protecting them. Despite this, governments at COP26 failed to take the bold and decisive action required to combat climate change. The decisions that those in power are making now will have the greatest impact upon the youngest and future generations, but they feel dismissed and ignored.

“We must consider the futures of young people, listen to their voices and place them at the centre of decision making. By bringing together all generations, we can demand that that governments engage in the urgent action on climate change we so desperately need.”

Mitzi Tan, 23-years-old, from the Philippines, said: “I grew up being afraid of drowning in my own bedroom. Society tells me that this anxiety is an irrational fear that needs to be overcome – one that meditation and healthy coping mechanisms will ‘fix.’ At its root, our climate anxiety comes from this deep-set feeling of betrayal because of government inaction. To truly address our growing climate anxiety, we need justice.”

Beth Irving, a 19-year-old climate activist behind the Cardiff student climate strikes, said: “When I was 16… I went through phases of feeling utterly helpless in face of this immense problem, and then would launch myself into organising protests or changing things within my school. To put so much energy into something and then see so little real life impact was exhausting; I had many occasions where I would hide myself away and think “None of this is enough”. It’s so damaging to put this problem on the shoulders of young people – hope needs to come instead from palpable structural action.”

Additional findings from the study include:

  • 59% of children and young people surveyed were very or extremely worried about climate change;
  • More than half of respondents said they had felt afraid, sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and/or guilty;
  • 55% of respondents felt they would have fewer opportunities than their parents;
  • 65% felt governments were failing young people, while 61% said the way governments deal with climate change was not “protecting me, the planet and/or future generations”;
  • Almost half (48%) of those who said they talked with others about climate change felt ignored or dismissed.
  • Young people surveyed from the Global South expressed more worry and a greater impact on functioning; while young people surveyed in Portugal (which has seen dramatic increases in wildfires since 2017) showed the highest level of worry amongst those from the Global North.

The study concludes that governments must respond to ‘protect the mental health of children and young people by engaging in ethical, collective, policy-based action against climate change.’

Notes about the study

  • 10,000 young people (aged 16-25 years) were surveyed, using polling company Kantar, in ten countries:
  • Australia, United States, United Kingdom, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Finland, Portugal, Brazil, and France. Data was collected on their thoughts and feelings about climate change, and government response.
  • The study was carried out by academics from a range of institutions: The University of Bath, the University of Helsinki, NYU Langone Health, University of East Anglia, Stanford Medicine Centre for Innovation in Global Health, and Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, The College of Wooster, Climate Psychiatry Alliance.
  • The costs of the survey were funded by AVAAZ. Avaaz is funded by small donations from citizens worldwide which allows it to finance urgently needed quantitative research in the emerging field of climate psychology. Avaaz has been campaigning on climate change for over a decade.

JOURNAL

The Lancet Planetary Health

DOI

10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00278-3 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Content analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

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

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Dec-2021

COI STATEMENT

COI: No competing interests. Acknowledgments: AVAAZ paid for the costs of the survey and arranged for data collection to be conducted by an independent recruitment platform (Kantar). We acknowledge Judith Anderson (Climate Psychology Alliance) and Natasa Mavronicola (University of Birmingham, Birmingham, U

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December 23, 2021 2:03 pm

Given the massive “you are all going to die” propaganda s*#!, it is a miracle it is not a 100%. But I guess even among the young and inexperienced, there is some resilience.

Scissor
Reply to  E. Schaffer
December 23, 2021 2:15 pm

Exactly right, it’s government propaganda, not inaction, that is damaging people psychologically.

Bob Close
Reply to  Scissor
December 23, 2021 11:29 pm

It not only governments that are at fault here, its also green activists, the media and NGO’s that have been infected with the AGW virus, all in the name of saving the planet. Actually this is noble cause corruption on a global scale, whereby psudo-science is being fostered by activist elites who are benefiting from the economic climate chaos, through renewables investments, etc.

Reply to  Bob Close
December 24, 2021 3:05 am

I agree.

And I further ask: who pays the piper? NGOs are not “sustainable” if based only on the contributions of their members and “compagnons de route”. You give a hint when you say “activiste elites“; that is to say, those connected to who pays the piper; who, at the same time, have big influence ongovernments.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  E. Schaffer
December 23, 2021 2:33 pm

It’s blatant psychological abuse, unfortunately. We had ‘the bomb’ and the ‘coming ice age’, they have ‘Global Warming’ and ‘covid’.

For some reason, the abuse seems to be having a much greater and damaging effect these days. The real irony is that the world is in a much better condition since the 70s,and is much safer and wealthier.

The only obvious reason seems to be newly created intoctrination in our education systems.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 23, 2021 2:59 pm

And now, just as I predicted, they are bringing forward covid ‘booster’ shots to 4 months. That’s up to quadruple profits now.

In Australia the so-called medical authorities are calling for a booster shot after 3 months, now. Quintuple profits.

My new prediction is double-shots, possibly of different vaccines (gotta share the profits, guys), every 4, or even 3 months. There’s waaaaay too much profit to let it go to waste.

In later news, Big Pharma actually owns everything ever. Fortunately, in return for owning you and your homes, they will give us ‘free’ covid vaccines monthly, free covid tests weekly, and 10 free ‘masks’ a week. Sign up here, folks!

In even later news, an island of vaccine vials, syringes, used covid tests and used masks, the size of Australia, has been discovered in the Pacific Ocean. Net zero is now planned for 2075 because emissions have been steadily rising, despite Al Gore selling one of his mansions. .

Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 23, 2021 3:52 pm

Can the Australian police always safely assume everyone speaks English?

4497ADD6-6A79-45EC-B61B-3BEB72EB5573.jpeg
Scissor
Reply to  gringojay
December 23, 2021 7:10 pm

I suppose they’ll put him up for the night.

MarkH
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 23, 2021 7:16 pm

If this paper (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.20.21267966v2) is accurate there’s reason to be worried for the jabbed… vaccine effectiveness going highly negative after 3 months against Omicron. Given the low effectiveness even at the peak combined with the transmissibility of Omicron and its low mortality, the calculus of mass vaccination makes no sense.

Bruce Ranta
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 23, 2021 8:19 pm

In Canada, coffee drinkers often ask for the ‘double double’. Given familiarity with the phrase, it was easy to go there with the ‘jab’.

bill Johnston
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 23, 2021 3:04 pm

And the mass media plus social media.

Laertes
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 23, 2021 4:23 pm

The abuse has more damaging effect, because in my youth days you could be isolated from mass media more. We didn’t have cellphones when I was a kid, and no internet. You could go half a day without hearing/seeing any news, especially if you skipped TV.

Now, kids spend a lot of time on social media… where you’re bombarded with messaging. There is no escape.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Laertes
December 23, 2021 5:46 pm

To the moderators: sorry about my misspelling of Zuckerberg, but on my keyboard ‘F’ is very close to ‘Z’ 😜

Raven
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 23, 2021 10:14 pm

Yeah, and the T and G keys are also close.
Needless to say, I no longer sign off an email with ‘Regards’.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Raven
December 23, 2021 10:32 pm

😝

Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 24, 2021 1:08 pm

G’Day ZZW,

‘F’ is very close to ‘Z’

I have a hunch it was induced by a change in the refractive index of the air between your eyes and the keyboard. Cane toad exhaust?

Mr.
Reply to  E. Schaffer
December 23, 2021 3:45 pm

Yep, there’s some encouraging news in this study –
about half the youngsters they surveyed DIDN”T think the world owes them a good life.

It’s this ‘other half’ that will out-compete the ‘defeated’ for jobs, partners, housing, recognition as they all make life’s journey.

(but can anyone these days truly imaging a news headline that screams –
“good news – half of all young people see no reason to fear future”

Alan Robertson
Reply to  E. Schaffer
December 23, 2021 6:33 pm

We older folks were toughened up against such frail spookeries as global warming.
In elementary school, we had periodic hallway drills of “duck and cover”.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Alan Robertson
December 24, 2021 5:27 am

Older folks have also been following this Human-Caused Global Whatever for decades and watched as its proponents made claim after claim that never panned out. So, needless to say, we are a little cynical about the current claims about Human-Caused Global Warming.

There’s no evidence humans are causing the Earth’s climate to do anything other than what it has done since the begiining of time. And this is after about 60 years of unsubstantiated claims from people promoting the idea that humans can cause the Earth’s climate to change. No evidence whatsoever that this is the case.

Everything about Human-Caused Climate Change is based on unsubstantiated assumptions. People are driving themselves crazy over unsubstantiated assumptions. Stop it!

MarkH
Reply to  E. Schaffer
December 23, 2021 7:09 pm

The climate nonsense is the same as the COVID nonsense. Just not quite as intense. This is deliberate mass formation. The people pudding this (largely the same on both counts) are driving the western world towards calamity.

Bruce Ranta
Reply to  E. Schaffer
December 23, 2021 8:16 pm

We are all going to die. But that is no reason for hysteria.

Reply to  Bruce Ranta
December 24, 2021 8:30 pm

Are you sure?

December 23, 2021 2:09 pm

Looks like the world is screwed.
Mann et all have released a monster by spreading climate disinformation globally.

Reply to  Stephen Wilde
December 24, 2021 9:24 am

There might actually be a way to prove the disinformation angle. It’s an educated guess that these polls ask utterly leading questions about reactions to ‘cataclysmic’ climate conditions. But imagine if they also asked one additional simple question: are the people aware that PhD-level climatologists / atmospheric physicists deeply dispute IPCC conclusions and say we don’t face anything close to the catastrophic predictions seen in news reports? If 97% of the response is “those skeptics are paid by Big Oil to lie,” then there’s your quantitative measurement.

Reply to  Russell Cook
December 24, 2021 1:12 pm

He who pays for the study/poll will most likely get the results he wants.

Fred Hubler
December 23, 2021 2:12 pm

This reminds me of the story about the man who murdered his parents who pleaded with the court for mercy on grounds that he was an orphan.

2hotel9
Reply to  Fred Hubler
December 23, 2021 3:42 pm

That was actually the Menendez brothers and yes, they beg for leniency because their parents were dead. They really set on the stand and vocalized it.

Doug Danhoff
December 23, 2021 2:12 pm

I honestly don’t give a damn what the snow flakes are distressed about …Grow up , move out of Mom’s basement and get a job. Once you have something to protect most of your problems are gone

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Doug Danhoff
December 23, 2021 2:41 pm

The problems aren’t gone, they are just seen as irrelevant once you have perspective. Get out and travel, I say. Unfortunately, these days travel is ‘safe’ and people learn extremely little except how to post bollox on instacrap.

I didn’t live with my parents most of the time since age 17. I did return repeatedly (I was the ‘boomerang’ child, last of 4), but in between I travelled to different countries, lived in them, and had my own business. I didn’t sit about wailing about how deprived I was.

Once I married and started a family, I did exactly the same, apart from not going back to live with my parents, and occasionally actually working for other people (ugh!) when circumstances dictated it.

Tom Halla
December 23, 2021 2:14 pm

Lacking the experience of the past dozen or so armageddons not happening, the kids will eventually build up resistance to fearmongers.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Tom Halla
December 23, 2021 2:43 pm

Then they’ll have kids, and so it goes on…

Coeur de Lion
December 23, 2021 2:16 pm

What do they want ‘governments’ to do? Crash stop CO2 production? Start where?

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Coeur de Lion
December 23, 2021 2:43 pm

They want governments to, like, ‘do something’, ya know?

Notanacademic
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 23, 2021 5:48 pm

Nail on head 👍.

Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 24, 2021 3:07 am

save the planet! /s

InterestedBystander
Reply to  Coeur de Lion
December 23, 2021 4:28 pm

Breathing?

December 23, 2021 2:20 pm

Just wait till these Psyched out people discover it is all a scam.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Rich Lentz
December 23, 2021 2:46 pm

Never will:

Nuclear Winter
Coming Ice Age
DDT
Ozone ‘Hole’

None have been acknowledged as scams. Ice age is just memory holed.

Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 23, 2021 3:47 pm

Acid Rain.
Y2K.
Peak Oil.

InterestedBystander
Reply to  M Courtney
December 23, 2021 4:29 pm

Swine flu.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  M Courtney
December 23, 2021 5:41 pm

Leave Y2K outta that. Made loadsa money!

Kevin R.
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 23, 2021 5:46 pm

There was supposed to be world-wide famine in the ’70’s too.

ANDY MANSELL
Reply to  Kevin R.
December 23, 2021 10:14 pm

Yep- we’re all going to starve/ run out of everything before 1980- panic people!

Dennis G Sandberg
December 23, 2021 2:22 pm

Probably a good distraction. The real problem is the out of control national debt that will wreck the economy within the next decade or two. Democrats want to increase spending, Republicans want to reduce taxes. They comprise and do both, and simply increase the national debt. How long can that unsustainable business model last? How will doubling the debt to $60 trillion in 20 years sit with the financial markets? Is the crisis 600 ppm ATM CO2 in 30 years or $60 trillion debt in 20 years? That’s what I thought.

fretslider
December 23, 2021 2:27 pm

8 out 10 cats are upset by government inaction

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  fretslider
December 23, 2021 2:48 pm

10 out of 10 cats are upset by a lack of food.

10 out of 10 socialists are upset by a lack of socialism.

10 out of 10 freeloaders are upset about a lack of free stuff.

Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
December 23, 2021 3:31 pm

10 of 10 rational taxpayers are upset about paying for the freeloaders free stuff.

If government wants to be a charity, then my federal taxes should be tax deductible.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  co2isnotevil
December 23, 2021 5:42 pm

If government wants to be a charity, then my federal taxes should be tax deductible.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Reply to  co2isnotevil
December 24, 2021 11:15 am

Best ever comment

I really want to steal that and pretend I thought of it

December 23, 2021 2:29 pm

Young people should get outside more and observe the weather, and not just on their devices either.

Rud Istvan
December 23, 2021 2:31 pm

In a way, they should have ‘climate change’ anxiety. Just not what is claimed by this survey of brain washed youth.

They have been lied to by ‘scientists’ about sea level rise, snow, polar bears, corals, and much more related to ‘carbon pollution’. That should induce legitimate anxiety about ‘climate science’. Renewables are unreliable and destabilize the grid, inducing blackout anxiety. Renewables make electricity increasingly unaffordable, inducing economic anxiety. EV’s automatically induce range anxiety; fast charging them induces battery failure anxiety. Renewables and EV’s require rare earths dominated by China, inducing national security anxiety. Solutions like GND or Net Zero are ruinous, inducing national debt anxiety.

So there really is a lot of ‘climate change’ induced rationally based legit grounds for anxiety.

Reply to  Rud Istvan
December 23, 2021 3:46 pm

Poisoning the brains of youth with climate alarmism has been going on for decades starting with kindergarten and the result of this brainwashing is becoming more and more apparent. It worked so well at replacing legitimate science with a narrative, it’s now being used to implement critical race/gender/idiot theories as a replacement for civil society.

The persuasive power of propaganda promoting evil wrapped in benevolence has caused much misery in the past and we’re seeing it happen again and again. Some know to recognize and reject such propaganda, but those who have not are the ones with all the anxieties and the ones making all the noise.

Mariner
Reply to  Rud Istvan
December 23, 2021 5:57 pm

“So there really is a lot of ‘climate change’ induced rationally based legit grounds for anxiety.”

  • 55% of respondents felt they would have fewer opportunities than their parents;

I agree with both statements. The reason kids will have “fewer opportunities than their parents” has not got anything to do with climate but everything to do with government reaction to perceived (non existent) climate problems.

Reply to  Rud Istvan
December 23, 2021 10:06 pm

The WWF ran a commercial on TV this evening begging for contributions to save the polar bears. In the case of many of these charitable organizations, climate change is the money box.

Doc Chuck
Reply to  Rud Istvan
December 23, 2021 11:53 pm

Quite right, Rud. When science is so handily supplanted by lying for desired effect we know we’re in for a heap of corruption from those in whom we’ve placed our trust, for which anxiety is hardly misplaced! Add to that the temptation to extend all this brainwashing to other matters benefiting the social manipulators; the throttling of the former expansive prospects of youth without due cause and at their own burden of debt to others; their willful deprivation of concentrated energy sources that in former generations had propelled historically unparalleled prosperity; the conversion of transport (and everything else) to dependence upon a sustainably unreliable electric power grid; and the simple inequity of those nations who don’t subscribe to, yet promote all this quicksand of national insecurity to others.

Reply to  Rud Istvan
December 24, 2021 9:10 am

Hilariously accurate, Rud, thanks.

Best Christmas wishes to you two,

w.

Bob Jameson
December 23, 2021 2:32 pm

So 55% are not worried about climate change?

Mr.
Reply to  Bob Jameson
December 23, 2021 3:49 pm

It would seem so.
But in keeping with “the narrative” these days – it’s the minority view that gets the publicity.

December 23, 2021 2:35 pm

So it’s the government’s fault for not fixing the fake climate crisis that they manufactured……..and not the government’s fault for manufacturing the climate crisis.

What’s ironic is that eco-anxiety is INTENTIONALLY being created. It’s the completely desired response to scaring people with exaggerations about the end of the planet, to justify actions by the government to eliminate fossil fuels.

They’re blaming the right entity but are confused about the reason. The governments intentionally created this problem (that didn’t exist before the fake climate crisis) so that dumb reports like this one can tell us that the same people need to fix it with actions, which is exactly what they want. To generate support to fix the problem they manufactured. That’s what this report is all about.

The smartest fix for this non climate problem……..is to just stop intentionally scaring people to convince them there is a problem………so that you can use the manufactured problem and their supposed fix……….to eliminate fossil fuels.

Just tell the entire objective truth about the climate(and weather) ………….and all the problems go away with the least amount of effort and least amount of deceit and the least cost.

Oh, but then we would be stuck with those dang cheap, reliable, abundant, practical and power charged fossil fuels.

Editor
December 23, 2021 2:56 pm

First, there was NOT a random selection of participants. The participants VOLUNTEERED on an online platform called “Kantar”, viz:

Data were collected from 10 000 young people via the participant recruitment platform Kantar. Participants were drawn from Kantar’s LifePoints online research panel (45 million people from 42 countries in 26 languages). Additional respondents were sourced from other double opt-in panels (ie, after registering to join a panel, respondents are required to click on a confirmation email) in the Kantar network in some countries.

So we’ve already self-selected a bunch of folks who a) are educated, aka indoctrinated, b) are wealthy enough to own a computer and know how to use it, c) have enough free time to mess about with voluntary surveys, d) know somehow about Kantar, and e) like Greta, think their opinion matters.

Then there was further winnowing:

15,543 people began the survey and 10,000 (68%) completed it.

Why exactly 10,000? Because they surveyed in 10 countries (Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, the UK, and the USA) and:

Data collection ended in each country once 1000 complete, anonymised responses were obtained.

So we have more self-selection, only those who really, really want their voices heard so they answered quickly.

In other words, they’re sampling self-selected wealthy entitled self-important wokerati of leisure … and on what planet do those people in those 10 countries represent “A Global Survey”?

And at that point, no results will mean anything about the real world. Want a real survey? The UN My World Survey asked 700 times as many people about their priorities … and action on climate came in dead last.

w.

2hotel9
Reply to  Willis Eschenbach
December 23, 2021 3:46 pm

As usual Willis you slice right down to the bone of the matter.

Mr.
Reply to  Willis Eschenbach
December 23, 2021 3:57 pm

In a saner world, you’d think the results of the UN My World Survey would dominate all the media articles about climate concern.

But that wouldn’t ingratiate the journalists with all their ‘woke’ friends & colleagues.

So the UN survey gets studiously ignored.

Sad.

Waza
Reply to  Willis Eschenbach
December 23, 2021 7:42 pm

Spot on
The current my world 30 survey echos previous surveys.
You need to be healthy to get an education and then a job.

From first hand experience in Philippines after floods and volcanoes the most important thing is to get a job and keep through hard times.
Maintaining a income after a disaster is more important than relying on government to help.

alastair gray
December 23, 2021 3:19 pm

Organised religion s the moral equivalent of a hub-cap stealing racket. Who needs to buy hub-caps ? Those who have had their hub-caps stolen. Who needs forgiveness from sin ? Those whom the Pope, Priest, Vicar, Chief Rabi, Grand Mufti, Ayatollah of Ayatollahs, Archbishop of Canterbury , Grand Imam of Rotherham, Shaman, Grand inquisitor or Chief Druid have convinced are dyed in the wood ,rotten from birth ,unfit to live sinners.

so also the climate clique poison our youth with guilt and promise only misery and doom.
And they are more than capable of delivering on their promises- if we listen to their lies and the poison of theior worm0-tongues.

2hotel9
December 23, 2021 3:39 pm

Silence the screeching leftarded a$$holes and all these problems vanish. Give young people something real to worry about, like a f**king job.

Mr.
Reply to  2hotel9
December 23, 2021 5:58 pm

But they don’t want “jobs”.
They want a “vocation”.

2hotel9
Reply to  Mr.
December 23, 2021 8:47 pm

They have shown themselves to lack basic intelligence to master a vocation, job is the best they will ever do. The more menial the better.

Geoffrey Williams
December 23, 2021 3:45 pm

I would suggest that it is not the ‘goverment innaction’ on climate change that is frustrating young people but rather the continued leftist rhetoric from the media that is leading to the perception that things are indeed getting worse . .

December 23, 2021 3:51 pm

In other news.. The latest American school shooter Ethan Crumbley, 15, was apparently in the habit of creating “disturbing” drawings at school, on at least one of which he wrote “the world is dead”. I wonder where he got that idea? Not suggesting that this belief was his motivation, but maybe a contributing factor?

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Right-Handed Shark
December 24, 2021 6:07 am

Well, if the alarmists spewed out doom and gloom continuously, that’s bound to agitate the psychos, and when psychos get agitated they many times act out violently.

Don’t agitate the psychos!

PaulH
December 23, 2021 3:58 pm

If they’re distressed about “government inaction” now, just wait until they see what “government action” brings.

mikeyj
Reply to  PaulH
December 23, 2021 4:15 pm

I worked for DOD for almost 30 years and my most effective strategy for failing contractors was to offer government help if they couldn’t fix the problem by themselves.

DMA
Reply to  PaulH
December 23, 2021 4:41 pm

It occurred to me that since the fright is caused by false information possibly the cure could also be. I have a magnetically attached device for every tail pipe or coal chimney that reverses the CO2 ability to heat the atmosphere. It will allow full use of fossil fuels without any fear of warming enhancement. If the Government will just buy enough of them we are all saved.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  DMA
December 24, 2021 6:10 am

Biden needs to install this device on every government vehicle.

InterestedBystander
December 23, 2021 4:24 pm

I just had a friend
tell me he has no intention to travel in retirement because it would increase his carbon foot. I was speechless. I couldn’t believe an othwise pretty smart guy could be so stupid.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  InterestedBystander
December 23, 2021 8:32 pm

That’s ok, it means that he won’t spread his stupidity as far!

Tom Abbott
Reply to  InterestedBystander
December 24, 2021 6:12 am

“I couldn’t believe an othwise pretty smart guy could be so stupid.”

There’s a lot of that going around. Obviously,even some smart people are easily misled.

Sara
December 23, 2021 4:29 pm

Sometimes, I only need to read a little bit, as with this: Our children’s anxiety is a completely rational reaction given the inadequate responses to climate change they are seeing from governments. – article

Well, what IS government going to do, anyway? Nothing. Not a confounded thing. Don’t kid yourselves, kiddos, the Gubmint does not give a flying feather in space if you are emotionally impacted in a bad way by the utter crap that The Gubmint has been throwing at you, via media resources of all kinds.

It’s a pity – a confounded shame, indeed! — that the brainwashing is so obvious to those of us who are firmly rooted in reality while these young people are being lied to and misled and bamboozled into doing stupid things.

And what happens when these younger people find that they have been lied to for decades? Wanna see more cities burning? More destruction? More lockdowns?

Nah, me, neither!

Graham
Reply to  Sara
December 23, 2021 6:18 pm

This climate change globull warming has been pushed for over 30 years and the people who have been pushing this scam certainly will not reduce their use of fossil fuels.
If you look at who are pushing this scam you will soon discover that the vast majority have never produced or made any thing of use for mankind.
To put it politely they are leeches .
They are either politicians from most countries or the UN ,or scientists that produce studies to push the falsehood that the doubling of CO2 will destroy the world.
The warming potential of CO2 is logarithmic and we are very close to saturation point .
Any further increase in CO2 atmospheric levels will cause little or no warming .
We are experiencing an early heat wave in New Zealand and the ocean around our coasts are warm but this is because of the La Nina conditions that we are experiencing in this part of the world .
We are constantly bombarded by our news media about the threat of globull warming and I can remember over 40 years ago that Gwynne Dyer predicted peak oil and now he is all climate gloom .
He never got peak oil right and he won’t get climate doom right either.
Is it any wonder that young people are worried about the climate with the constant barrage on TV and the news papers?

John the Econ
December 23, 2021 5:26 pm

Recent research also shows that children and young people are not willing to make any material personal sacrifice to address climate change. They all assume it’s up to someone else to take care of, and to pay for.

Why should there be any surprise that these children and young people think and act just like children? The sad part is that a large percentage of the adult population thinks the same.

Like children.

John Garrett
December 23, 2021 5:36 pm

In the forty-four (44) years since satellite-based measurement of the global lower atmosphere commenced in 1979, the global temperature has risen 0.08° C. (that’s eight hundredths of a degree, folks) over the 1991-2020 mean global average temperature.
 
Source:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2021/12/uah-global-temperature-update-for-november-2021-0-08-deg-c/  

That’s hardly an “existential threat.”

The truth will set you free.

Reply to  John Garrett
December 23, 2021 7:29 pm

That’s why the government is reducing past temperatures. If you can’t change reality, change history. Any “journalist” worth his salt makes that 0.08 C look like 800 C. It’s not as if they’re teaching journalism in journalism school any more.

Kevin R.
December 23, 2021 5:43 pm

The Left creates a very sick neurotic society.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Kevin R.
December 24, 2021 6:15 am

That’s because the radical Left are very sick, neurotic people.

gbaikie
December 23, 2021 5:56 pm

We in 34 million year Ice Age, and teachers are telling kids there is some worry about Earth becoming like Venus. Of course they are crazy.
Not educated, but given very bad daycare, and fervently teaching a crazy religious doctrine of end of the world, which makes absolutely, no sense.

December 23, 2021 6:10 pm

Social media like Instagram is the real threat to teenage mental health.

Edward Katz
December 23, 2021 6:11 pm

One way of easing the distress supposedly caused by the media’s climate hysteria would be to go easier on the drugs and alcohol.

December 23, 2021 7:18 pm

Another aspect of this is to consider what the anxiety would be if governments and science activists were to change their opinions about ‘human-caused climate change being mainly driven by CO2 emissions’, to ‘climate change is mostly natural, and beyond our control, and therefore we must adapt and protect ourselves from extreme weather events which are likely to occur in the future because they have fairly regularly occurred in the past?’

It’s very expensive to build infrastructure and homes that can resist the effects of extreme weather events that might tend to occur every decade, or 2, or 3, in a particular region.
In 2011 we had some very severe flooding in Queensland, Australia. Rockhampton, which is a city north of Brisbane, experienced particularly severe flooding which was reported in the media as the worst ever, or worst on record.

Out of curiosity, after the floods had subsided, I did a search on the internet to find if that flood in 2011 really was the worst on record. I found from the BOM records that it was the 5th worst on record since 1880. I also discovered that Rockhampton experiences a major flood, on average, every 20 years, approximately, plus a moderate flood every 6 or 7 years, on average, since records began.

The previous major flood occurred in 1991. The flood height was just a few centimeters below the 2011 flood, but what amazed me is that the Rockhampton Council was still deliberating over the recommendations of the 1991 flood report when the 2011 flood occurred. That report recommended the construction of flood levees to protect the airport and low-lying houses.

I’ve just recently done another search to find out what progress the Rockhampton Regional Council has made to protect the citizens from future flooding. Not much it seems. They haven’t even started the construction of the levee which was recommended 30 years ago, due to a lack of funding. The following site provides an overview.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-14/south-rockhampton-flood-levee-faces-funding-challenge/12761640

This situation at Rockhampton is just one example in a fairly well developed country such as Australia. I wonder how many similar situations exist throughout the world. Presumably tens of thousands, in countries with far less money available to mitigate the effects of extreme weather events, than Australia has.

Suppose the alarm about the effects of our CO2 emissions were shifted to an alarm about the recurrence of natural, extreme weather events. Wouldn’t a greater percentage of children in the world suffer even more anxiety because governments were not doing enough to protect their citizens from such future events?

Graham
Reply to  Vincent
December 23, 2021 8:30 pm

I know that this is a little off topic but what is wrong with the Rockhampton Council in Queensland .
Every time the news media hypes up a flood in New Zealand and blame it on climate change here in New Zealand younger people say to me “see that’s proof of climate change “.
I then tell them about the 1958 flood on the Waipa river that inundated Otorohanga and caused some flooding in other towns on the lower Waikato River .
The government of the day formed the” Waikato Valley Authority ” who got to work with the Otorohanga Council and erected stop banks around the town which were well built and have stood the test of time and have never been breeched .
That was in 1958 ,what is wrong with the modern councils ?
Answer They spend to much time on climate change instead of tackling flood issues .

Reply to  Graham
December 23, 2021 9:58 pm

“That was in 1958,what is wrong with the modern councils ? Answer They spend too much time on climate change instead of tackling flood issues.”

Many skeptics, including myself, are concerned about the waste of money and resources used to replace energy from fossil fuels with energy from unreliable renewables, which has the effect of raising electricity prices. However, suppose the Rockhampton Council were to give priority to the building of levees, even though they couldn’t get sufficient funding from the federal government. Where would they get the funds from?

The obvious answer would be from a significant increase in property rates and land taxes. However, this could result in lots of people leaving the area. Their house insurance is already very high due to the flood risk. Increasing property rates and taxes to pay for levee construction could result in an over-all reduction in economic activity in the area as people moved to safer and less expensive areas.

I see this as a major problem in so many areas around the world, especially in less developed countries where so many families can only afford to live in the most basic shacks with little protection from floods, tsunamis, hurricanes and so on.

ANDY MANSELL
December 23, 2021 10:25 pm

I wonder what the young people in China think?

Tom Abbott
Reply to  ANDY MANSELL
December 24, 2021 6:20 am

That’s a good question.

Reply to  ANDY MANSELL
December 24, 2021 5:59 pm

They probably don’t see any difference between the current climate prohibition movement and the missionary-based colonialism of the 18-19th century. I don’t think they love it very much. Or us westerners. Why should they?

Harves
December 23, 2021 11:16 pm

…. and 0% said they’d be willing to give up their fossil-fuel produced phones or air conditioned classrooms to save the planet.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Harves
December 24, 2021 6:20 am

That’s more like it.

Vincent Causey
December 24, 2021 12:55 am

I’ve yet to meet any young person who exhibits “climate anxiety”. Although I accept there might be such individuals (Greta Thunberg), to call it widespread is nonsense.

michael hart
December 24, 2021 2:12 am

Utter drivel, as usual. If the question isn’t asked, then the topic won’t even be mentioned.

I can tell you what at least 50% of the world’s youth is really concerned about: Not getting laid. I bet the survey didn’t ask about that.

Tj Smith
December 24, 2021 2:54 am

Quite honestly, even though I’m 20, I am more worried about “global cooling”. NOT global warming. My parents are in their early 50’s. With that, I’ve grown resilience against listening to the media and ignoring their apocalyptic messages of climate change and several other thing. It annoys in some ways and also saddens me my generation doesn’t know this is just a money-grabbing opportunity. So I do have anxiety of climate change, it just isn’t exactly what the majority of my generation is worrying about.

Teddy Lee
December 24, 2021 3:12 am

I have a “feeling” that lots and lots of over emotional females were involved in expressing their “feelings”in this survey.

Alasdair Fairbairn
December 24, 2021 3:54 am

These kids are going to be very angry when they grow up and tumble to the fact that they have been well and truly duped. I am just pleased that I won’t be around to witness the consequences.
How they will react with only a flat battery with which to express themselves is anyone’s guess.

Bruce Cobb
December 24, 2021 4:59 am

Yeah, no. The “poll” and its “conclusions” busted my bogometer. Kids are being used as pawns by the lying Climate Liars. That is criminal on a humongous, monstrous scale. The ones who go on to climate activism become the angry, tiresome, whiny Gretas, unwilling and/or unable to contribute to society.
Here’s a video of a “climate talk” between a young person and his “parents”. In the sketch, the son has to “educate” the parents, but in a way that doesn’t make them uncomfortable. Funny, huh. Because the kids “know” all about “climate change”, while the parents are totally ignorant and squeamish about it. Riiiiiiiiight.



Tom Abbott
December 24, 2021 5:13 am

From the article: ““Our children’s anxiety is a completely rational reaction given the inadequate responses to climate change they are seeing from governments.”

It is a completely rational reaction given the amount of climate change propaganda they have been subjected to.

There is NO evidence that CO2 will cause harm to humans or the Earth’s atmosphere. The harm comes from all the lies and distortions spread about CO2.

Michael Mann and his Data Mannipulating cronies must be so proud of themselves. They’ve managed to scare half of our young people to death with their climate change lies.

The only “evidence” for unprecedented warming is the Hockey Stick chart Lie created by Michael Mann and Company.

Written temperature records, uncontaminated by Michael Mann’s manipulations, show there is no unprecedented warming today, and this means that CO2 is a minor player in the Earth’s atmosphere and is nothing to be worried about or regulated.

Kids, you have nothing to fear but fear itself. Some adults are lying to you.

Maybe this fact will help the kids sort it out: Fact: Not one prediction by the Climate Change alarmists has come true since this human-caused climate change isssue came up decades ago. Not one. That ought to tell you something. You are being scammed.

December 24, 2021 11:22 am

First world psychosis
3rd world poverty

All caused or maintained by climate change POLICY

December 24, 2021 5:51 pm

The Catholic term for this is “attrition”, as shown in the movie “Seven” (Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt). Suffering directly for your sin and stupidity, without any progress toward repentance. Not a nice place to be in.

I have to say that in regard to the climate, the earth and the biosphere I feel a very profound feeling of happiness, tranquility and peace. The thought of CO2 pouring into the atmosphere second by second, fertilising and enriching the biosphere on land and sea, is a source of pride and contentment.

I also am OK with the existence of the human race and their / our dominant position in the earth system. The biosphere is quietly adapting to this reality to mutual benefit. At the heart of self inflicted climate anxiety is intolerance of humanity itself. It is not based on science or reality, but is a Nietzsche-ian death cult. Like the na3is.

December 24, 2021 7:31 pm
December 25, 2021 1:47 am

Well-known tip for mental health: if anything is beyond your ability to change, it’s OK. This is profoundly true.

By coercing a generation to believe that they are morally responsible for the weather and the earth’s climate system, and the law of chaotic nonlinear dynamics, our dear leaders have condemned that generation to a huge amount of damaging anxiety.

However this should be weighed against the enormous thrill of moral self-righteousness that accompanies moral prohibitions like the current carbon prohibition and the alcohol prohibition a century ago. And add to that the sweet schadenfreude that comes with the stoning to death of heretics.

Reply to  Phil Salmon
December 25, 2021 1:52 am

Forgot the image 🙂

7B806486-833A-470D-9AD9-91D186B29E95.jpeg
Kevin R.
Reply to  Phil Salmon
December 25, 2021 11:29 am

It would have taken a lot of alcohol to breed with those ladies.