CHICAGO – A “supermajority” of young Americans across the political spectrum feel distressed about human-made climate change and want bolder action from the government and corporations, a new study has found. Experiencing the worsening effects of a rapidly changing climate throughout their youth and into adulthood, this crisis has become existential for them.
In the largest survey of its kind, 85% of nearly 16,000 respondents ages 16 to 25 from all 50 states reported being worried about the impact of climate change on people and the planet. More than 60% said they felt the emotional impact of this global crisis — anxiety, powerlessness, fear, sadness, anger. The study showed high proportions of concern across the board, whether respondents identified as Democrat, Republican, independent or other.
“So it really kind of challenges the notion that this is a very partisan issue. It certainly doesn’t appear that way in this younger age group,” said Eric Lewandowski, the study’s lead author and a clinical psychologist. He’s also a child and adolescent psychiatry professor at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, one of six universities involved in the research published Thursday in the scientific journal The Lancet Planetary Health.
One-third of respondents said climate change affected their ability to carry on with their daily lives, including focusing on work or school, eating and sleeping, having fun and enjoying relationships.
“Honestly, the results don’t surprise me. I’ve seen it in my friends, I’ve seen it in myself. I’ve seen the despair,” said Chicago resident Zoharia Drizin, 24, a Gen Z advisory board member at the Climate Mental Health Network, a national advocate-led resource hub for mental well-being helping youth, parents and educators develop strategies to manage the emotional toll of climate change.
These sweeping feelings of helplessness, however, translate into a strong desire for action: 77% want the U.S. government and other countries to plan and prevent the worst consequences of the climate crisis. There is a similarly strong consensus around corporations reducing their contributions to pollution and schools providing education and opportunities for discussion.
An “extraordinarily sobering” number of young people acknowledged they are afraid — “not only for today but for the future,” said co-author Lise Van Susteren, a psychiatrist and professor of behavioral sciences at the George Washington University School of Medicine, also one of the schools involved in the study.
But the results, as alarming as they may be, also offer a path forward.
“To be able to put numbers on it is very heartening,” Van Susteren said. “Because it feels that we’re going to be better at breaking through the denial or the dismissiveness or the downplaying that has kept society and everyone else from taking the action that is necessary.”
Those overwhelmed by climate concerns can find ways to make these complex feelings tolerable — even actionable — with the help of community advocates and mental health professionals.
While that kind of care is necessary and beneficial, it doesn’t address the root causes of the distress: As long as youth feel that climate change is not being properly addressed, researchers say, their distress will continue to increase.
“Right now what we have is a systemic issue, which is a public health emergency,” Van Susteren said. “And that calls for us to activate everyone, across every single sector, to address what is a legitimate danger — and a mounting one at that.”
Generational gaps in political action
Historically, the United States has been one of the largest contributors to global emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, from burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal. This puts the American government in a unique position to address climate change, a priority for young people across the nation and the political spectrum.
“Regardless of their political affiliation, nobody wants their home to be destroyed. Nobody wants their future to be ruined,” said Drizin, who works for a company that helps restore land that has been affected by severe weather. Drizin said her job has familiarized her with how people are affected by climate change across the country.
When it comes to overall worry, 96% of survey respondents who identified as Democrats said they were concerned. The percentages for other political inclinations were not as high but still represented a majority, including 86% of independent and third-party respondents, and 74% of Republicans.
The most cited contributing factors to this worry included the actions of corporations and industries, unseasonable weather and the current response of the U.S. government. The latter, the study found, made most respondents feel ignored and angry, like the people in charge have failed and betrayed them and younger generations.
The researchers say their findings are a wake-up call.
“When young people speak about their personal feelings, you can hear a pin drop,” Van Susteren said. “And the response is that it can awaken in those powerful adults the sense of their moral, ethical responsibility to do what they can because they are people with the capacity to make change, whether it’s judges or lawyers or teachers or policymakers.”
Reflecting an overwhelming desire for strong government action, almost three-fourths of respondents said they were likely to vote for political candidates who supported aggressive climate policy. Although young people who identified as Democrats and independents were likelier to report a desire for action, a majority of young Republicans did too.
So, while party identification has long been the strongest predictor for attitudes about climate change, with Democrats supporting climate-related policies more than Republicans, Gen Z and millennial Republicans are likelier than older ones to vote in favor of climate-friendly action.
One explanation, the study found, is that young people who have experienced more types of severe weather events were likelier to strongly endorse action plans regardless of their party affiliation. The two most common types of such events that respondents said they had experienced included extreme heat or heat waves, as well as smoke or air pollution — both of which even so-called climate havens like the Midwest have been vulnerable to, including when in 2023 smoke from Canadian wildfires blew into the United States and blanketed the region in a thick haze.
“Last summer … the alternation between severe rainstorms and then air pollution warnings, and just going back and forth between that was really jarring for me,” Drizin said. “It kind of gave me this sense of claustrophobia, like the whole world was caving in, almost like there’s nowhere I can be that’s actually safe.”
The researchers said these findings suggest that as climate change intensifies severe weather and widens its reach and as more young people from different political inclinations experience its impact, they will feel more distressed and be more willing to take action.
“One of the other real big advantages about these numbers is that it really makes it harder to deny the reality,” Van Susteren said. “When we go to talk to people about needing to take action, waving those numbers in the air has a way of being a sort of indisputable aspect of the discussion.”
Uncertain futures
Another striking number from the study was that over three-fourths of respondents said the future frightened them, and the majority said their concerns are affecting their life decisions such as where to live or whether to have children. More than half of young Americans said they felt hesitant to have kids because of climate change.
“All of these normal life steps feel so much more redundant in the face of world-consuming climate terror and climate catastrophe,” Drizin said.
Some worry about the ethics of bringing future generations into a dangerous world, others about the environmental impact of raising them — according to a 2017 analysis, having one less child is associated with a reduction of 58.6 metric tons of CO2 equivalents, comparable to 2.4 metric tons a year from living car-free.
“I’ve always dreamed of having children,” Drizin said. “And one of the most heart-wrenching parts of this crisis is the selfishness that that lifelong dream has taken on. … It feels unfair to these children that I’ve so desperately wanted, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
She doesn’t want to have to tell her children they can’t go outside in the summer because the air is too polluted or the streets are flooded. Like Drizin, many young people are grieving and mourning a loss of safety and an ideal future they might never get.
“I see elderly folks or even people who are 50,” she said, “somebody in that age who is living their life full of love and doing the things they want to do in their family — I pray that I can get to that age and be able to experience that same joy.”
Van Susteren hopes the study reaches ethical, empathetic individuals who care about other people’s children and their own — “and to have them do everything they can to provide what many of us had growing up, a relative sense of safety.”
“That was our main goal, to reach hearts and minds and get past the political hurdles that have been so divisive,” she said.
