How Youth Climate Anxiety Became a Convenient Foil for the Right
In September, NASA declared the summer of 2024 the hottest in recorded history. Before that news could be fully digested, the U.S. was hit with Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, unprecedented in their own rights in terms of intensity and destruction. Despite the seemingly neverending accumulation of dire climate records and extreme weather events, Republicans remain thoroughly opposed to virtually any kind of climate change mitigation effort. In May, Republican governor of Florida Ron DeSantis, whose state was ravished by both Helene and Milton, signed legislation to remove most references to climate change from Florida state law. In a presser on October 10, DeSantis referenced prior hurricanes in Florida to dispel claims that the state’s hurricanes were amplified by climate change: “They try to take different things that happen with tropical weather and act like it’s something—there’s nothing new under the sun.”
According to a recent Pew poll, only 12% of Republicans, compared to 59% of Democrats, believe that dealing with climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress. Showing that the GOP wants to go beyond its usual aims of bolstering fossil fuel production and eliminating environmental regulations, Republicans’ resistance is increasingly evolving into shrewd strategies focused on dismantling climate education and advocacy programs, and even promoting misinformation (like Republican U.S. Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene’s recent claim that people can “control” the weather).
But the GOP’s newest, and perhaps most dangerous, effort has been to weaponize the accelerating prevalence of “climate anxiety” in American youth. Climate anxiety speaks to the dread that people often feel when ruminating on the known and suspected consequences of climate change. It’s especially high among youth—the demographic that will bear the brunt of climate change in the coming years. Republican’s response? Making the case that it’s the grim discussions of climate change, not climate change itself, that’s contributing to youth climate anxiety.
In one 2024 study conducted by MassINC Polling Group, 53% of middle and high school students polled across the U.S. indicated that they think climate change will be a major problem in their lifetime, highlighting associated feelings of sadness, uneasiness, and helplessness. At a youth climate leader event in 2023, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris spoke to these deepening concerns, empathizing with American youths’ fears over “whether it makes sense for you even to think about having children, whether it makes sense for you to think about aspiring to buy a home because what will this climate be.” Predictably, the Right quickly seized on soundbites from the visit to suggest Harris was encouraging young people to abstain from having children or buying a home.
Following destructive climate-related events like hurricanes and wildfires, data from climate researchers shows that survivors often become depressed, anxious, and sometimes suicidal in their struggle to recover and make sense of the occurrence. Primary sources of stability—like employment—are often directly affected, which in turn can impact one’s mental health. With these kinds of climate-related happenings becoming both more severe and more frequent, youth are asking serious questions regarding what kind of life they can expect for themselves and their loved ones. That’s far from hysteria.
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Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump routinely maligned and mocked environmentalists, purposefully caricaturing them with labels like “prophets of doom.” He reserved some of his most minimizing remarks for young activists. Responding to climate advocate Greta Thunberg’s fiery speech at the United Nations General Assembly in 2019, Trump glibly tweeted this about the then-16-year-old: “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!”
If elected, Trump has vowed to exit the Paris Climate Accords (again) and eliminate political and administrative hurdles to oil and gas projects, acts that will deepen our already perilous situation. And this is just one element of his party’s ongoing assault on climate change reduction efforts. In recent years, Republicans have gotten more brazen in their efforts to silence or otherwise undercut climate advocacy, now focusing on the supposed perils of climate education on youth.
In a letter to the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in August 2024, Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz called for the agency—widely revered by scientists around the world— to be investigated for “producing faux-educational materials that fuel climate alarmism to manufacture support for the [Biden] administration’s goals” as a key part of a “hyperventilating campaign of youth indoctrination.”
The average American understandably finds it hard to outright dismiss this kind of polemic when it operates under the guise of protecting children, a political third rail. However, Cruz and others’ climate programming attacks borrow heavily from the standard GOP playbook—one that also seeks to trivialize and undercut teachings on societal ills like structural racism and gender discrimination to maintain an inequitable status quo. Youth are a highly convenient foil. Step one: downplay the very existence or extent of the issue. Step two: claim that the mere discussion of the issue is harming our youth.
Fortunately, we can thwart the weaponization of youth climate anxiety in a way that is politically transparent and will avoid destabilizing science and upending notions of social accountability. First, climate activists indeed need to be more careful and nuanced in their messaging. In a 2022 poll of youth between 14 and 24, 75% indicated that they had experienced at least one mental health-related issue—such as feeling anxious, stressed, or overwhelmed—due to their consumption of climate change-related news. While climate change reports shouldn’t be softened to make them more palatable, research suggests that climate messaging with optimistic framings can spur action. Messaging that traffics heavily in doomsday scenarios, rather than discussions of the everyday tumult and inconveniences caused by climate change, is likely to distract from the more observable issues (and continue to conjure partisan attacks).
Second, the government needs to untether itself from the financial spoils of the fossil fuel industry. According to a 2024 analysis from the nonpartisan research group OpenSecrets, over $133 million was spent last year on oil and gas lobbying efforts. Dating back to the 1990 election cycle, more than two-thirds of the industry’s political contributions went to Republicans. While it is not possible to completely prohibit these seismic donations, to ensure greater transparency and accountability, Congress must pass laws that require Super PACs used by the likes of Big Oil to indicate which specific campaign activities and ads their donors are endorsing.
Finally, we must create deeper boundaries between government and our education systems, leaving content curation to educators and nonpartisan school boards. The U.S. Senate’s recently passed Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), derided for its loose guidelines for mitigating children’s access to harmful online content, demonstrates the pitfalls of determining what constitutes a harm and for whom it’s a harm. Republican Senator Rand Paul, far from an environmentalist, asked in opposition to the bill, “Would KOSA deprive the next Greta Thunberg from engaging in online climate activism?”
More to the point: Ending discussion on climate change won’t eliminate the fear around it—in fact, suppression of climate change discussions is likely to elevate those fears.